Have seen posts talking about wheat for anywhere from $8-$15 per 100 lbs - and then got the Lehman's Catalog and saw wheat berries for $24.95 for 25 lbs. (Otherwise, I like them a lot.) Have the hand mill now, but where can I buy wheat berries - is that what I buy to grind for flour?

Can I grind corn that way too for corn meal? I do know where to get corn - I should, in Iowa :-)

-- Melissa (financed@forbin.com), September 30, 1998

Answers

Take a look at www.wheatmt.com. They list a lot of kinds of wheat available in 5 gallon pails or 50 lb bags - no prices shown on their web page but they have a toll free number listed. You might try them to see if their prices are competitive after allowing for shipping charges. Sounds like they could ship right away, which is not true for some places like Waltonfeed. ..........

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), September 30, 1998.

Melissa, you can buy wheat in many forms. I'll give you 3 options. See what works for you.

1. Grain dealers such as Lehi Mills and others can provide low moisture, cleaned, high protein wheat. [BTW, Lehmans is dry Montana wheat, cleaned, etc., with a mark-up.] The wheat itself isn't expensive, but shipping costs can get out of hand if you're not careful. I've provided Lehi Mills URL below. Good stuff, price is reasonable, but watch the shipping charges. Maybe you'd like to go in with several people and have one shipment made (cheaper per pound) rather than just having enough sent for your family.

http://www.lehimill.com

2. At the opposite end of the spectrum, you can buy feed wheat (not recommended.....see quote below) from local farm supply and feed stores. Usually in 50# bags. No moisture control, not well cleaned (if cleaned at all), and often subject to pesticides that are deemed OK for animals, but may be hazardous to humans.

3. In between, you may be able to find a feed or farm supply store that will sell you food grade wheat. This stuff is low moisture when it was shipped, and has been cleaned (chaff, insects removed, etc.) You'll have to package it yourself, so that means buying buckets and lids (at a minimum), running a test for moisture content, and using dessicants if the wheat is too moist. If you want to learn how to package it I recommend that you browse:

http://www.survival-center.com/

Go to the Food Storage section. This is many, many pages, filled with all sorts of information on preparing food for long term storage. This site, alone, will keep you busy for a couple of days. Lots of good stuff.

4. Finally, I offer the following information, posted by Cory Jensen of Lehi Mills on the Gary North Food Storage Forum. Yes, Lehi Mills would like to sell their wheat, but I believe the information to be accurate. Note: he doesn't urge you to buy his product, but he does ask that you know what you're buying:

_______________

"Please be EXTREMELY careful when buying wheat from a feed store. Make sure you know exactly what you are getting. I sympathize with your desire to get local wheat and avoid shipping charges. However, consider that most wheat in feed stores is there because it is not suitable for food.

Farmers generally try to sell their wheat to food channels because they are paid much more per bushel. Generally, wheat is sold to feed channels because it is too high in moisture (won't store properly), or too low in protein / baking quality (won't work for flour), has excessive kernel damage (won't mill properly) or has been harmed by bugs, disease, etc. It may be there because the dockage levels (amount of foreign material in the wheat, e.g. dirt, weeds, goatgrass, grasshopper legs, etc.) are excessively high and the wheat can't be adequately cleaned for human consumption. For whatever reason, MOST [Note that he said MOST, not ALL] wheat in feed stores is NOT fit for human consumption.

I shudder to think about what some people are buying and storing, and what they'll find when they try to use the wheat. Please be informed and know what you're getting before you buy."

_____________

Hope this helps,

rocky

-- rocky knolls (rknolls@hotmail.com), September 30, 1998.

I received a great catalog in the mail from "Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, Inc." They are located in Oregon. Looks like their prices are if not competitive, outstanding. As rocky said, you must factor in shipping costs, but looks like at least for wheat berries they beat Lehman's. ($9.85 for 25 lbs.) They have oodles and oodles of grains and grain products. They process on milling machinery 100 to 130 years old, refurbished. I have not ordered yet, but plan to. Can't see a URL listed on catalog but the rest of the contact info is:

Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, Inc.
5209 S. E. International Way
Milwaukie, Oregon 97222
(503)654-3215
FAX (503)653-1339

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), September 30, 1998.

Practical level question here, from an admitted non-cooking male-type person.

Is it reasonable to want to buy "raw" wheat, requiring all the effort and manual work to process it into flour, and then into something you can eat, or to get the flour itself (even though you still have to bake it into something useful), or to get the end product (noodles, spagetti, lasagna, or whatever.)

I understand bread itself won't keep, but seems like pasta would stay "forever" and still be "dried" and "pre-cooked". Certainly seems easier to make a meal from pasta rather than wheat.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 30, 1998.

My reason for wanting wheat berries and a mill would be for long term storage and food preparation. If supply lines for prepared foods is severly interrupted and I cannot buy pasta, but I have wheat berries nd can grind flour for the making of pasta I can have pasta as long as the berries last. I can also cook berries for cereal. I can also make bread with my own ground flour. I would rather just store flour, but the berries store better longer than the flour. Makes preparing for meals a bit longer...a lot longer,....I will also store pasta, flour, etc., and keep hoping that I will only have to boil water.

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), September 30, 1998.

And breakfast of the berries soaked overnight in a WARM place, (like right near the stove), and then boiled, and adulterated with Honey, or molasses, or God be Praised Maple Syrup is a meal to remember (which happens to last a LOT better than a bowl of Screaming Yellow Zonkers or whatever).

CR

-- Chuck a Night Driver (rienzoo@en.com), October 01, 1998.

Wow! Screaming Yellow Zonkers! I just took the express bus back to my adolescence. Reading the box was most of the fun. Than and picking the sticky stuff out of your teeth. Mommy however would not let us eat it for breakfast. ROFL

-- Donna Barthuley (moment@pacbell.net), October 01, 1998.

Robert:

Ur right! [Imagine that :)]

But------

Bread keeps only a few weeks. Flour will keep about a year. Wheat will keep indefinitely (witness edible wheat taken from Egyptian pyramids) if stored in a cool, dark place.

Donna is on the same page that I'm reading from: Store everything, but have something that will last, just in case. [I'm looking at several 5-gallon buckets of 'just in case,' sitting in my office now.......root cellar isn't finished.]

BTW, wheat, rice, and beans can be given to anyone knocking at my door. With my location I won't ever have to feed the world, but a few neighbors may get hungry. So, they make inexpensive, nutricious, and easy to store foods to have on hand.

rocky.......where I can look out my window and watch the hills of West Virginia change color every day. God has been good to me.

-- rocky (rknolls@hotmail.com), October 01, 1998.

Melissa, call Lehi Mills and talk to Cory Jensen. He is a veritable font of info on the subject of wheat & wheat storage, etc., and is great to talk to. I placed an order on Monday, and our 36 buckets of grains will be here by the middle of October, UPS. (Cory said 5-6 business days, but what the heck, give 'em a bit of slack...)

We'd ordered from Walton Feeds in May, and then were told to expect 14 weeks. Then their website said all orders were backlogged 6 months. Now I've heard that it's more like a YEAR!!! We cancelled that order! I spent a while trying to find a reliable source of grain, and I found Lehi Mills from a post a while ago, and finally got around to calling them on Monday.

BTW, if you have whole wheat berries, you can plant them and grow more. Doesn't work with flour! Plus, a cup of wheat berries will grind into about one and a half cups of flour. A 50% increase in volume! To be considered if storage space is limited!!!

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), October 01, 1998.

Chuck, If you put honey, maple syrup and molasses on Screaming Yellow Zonkers you will have a more fulfilling and nutritious breakfast. That way you get some food from the beige food group, the brown food group and the black food group, as well as the yellow food group. If you also put green M&Ms on it you have food from the green food group as well, which is where so many natural vitamins come from. Actually, if you also eat the cereal box the Screaming Yellow Zonkers came in you get grey food group, plus your daily allotment of fiber, which greatly increases the benefits to your health.

If you store Screaming Yellow Zonkers, I'm pretty sure there is no reduction in nutrition after 5 years - although it takes quite a bit of room to store a year's supply of breakfast for a family of 4. I like the Frosted Screaming Yellow Zonkers better than the plain ones. <<<<<>>>>>.....

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), October 01, 1998.

I think we should make Dan Hunt our Nutrition Czar.

-- Sara Nealy (keithn@ptd.net), October 01, 1998.

Donna, back to more serious stuff. Around the 1st of August I visited Bob's Red Mill in Milwaukie, Oregon with my wife. They had an amazing variety of grains and flour in their store. I didn't realize they published a catalog. Thanks for mentioning that. A forum participant by the name of Paul who lives in the Portland area e-mailed me privately about the place. He said that he had made a deal with a guy named Sam at Bob's Red Mill who set him up as a wholesale account on the purchase of 500 lbs of hard red wheat for $9.30 per 50 lb bag (picked up at the store). If you weren't in the area you would have to pay the shipping - I don't know what that would be. The price is a little higher on smaller quantities, of course. ...............

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), October 04, 1998.

If you would like to try buying grain directly from a farmer go to: http://www.farmerdirect.com/ This is a site started by Carla Emery (the author of "The Encyclopedia of Country Living") At the site you can search for a farmer in your area. There is no guarantee of grain quality, but it will be better than buying it from a grain elevator where they mix bad and good grain together and sell it at a good price.

-- Louise (~~~~~@~~~~.~~~), October 04, 1998.

Befriend a local mormon/LDS they have access to the bishops warehouse where they not only have wheat but the means to can it. I am not a mormon just related to one.

-- Louis M. LeRoy (lml@upstate.net), October 06, 1998.