I'm firmly convinced that many in our country have lost touch with WHERE their food comes from.

Since so many “convenience” foods, children sometimes don't have a clue as to the "process" required to MAKE that loaf of bread they see in the store. 

I've actually encountered children, and adults,  who don't know where flour comes from!  When I show them a stalk of wheat, with it's tiny kernels, they are amazed!  Inevitably, all want to “taste” a kernel of raw wheat and they like it!

By using all processed foods, children also miss out on the “steps”, such as:

• the farmer grows, harvests, then sells the wheat
• the wheat is ground, or milled, into flour
• the flour is mixed with water, salt, sugar or honey, & yeast to make bread
• the bread is sold by the baker to the store and ready for sale to the ultimate consumer

In our shop, we try and "educate" and "inform" as much as possible and there's a valid reason we put so much emphasis on "equipping" our patrons.

The Bible mentions people perishing because of a lack of knowledge.  I know it applies primarily to the saving knowledge of Christ's death on the cross, but I think it applies to many other situations in life, as well.

For example, I believe weight gain can be a sign of the body's cry for more nutrition. 

I know it's that way with myself.  If my body tells me, “I need food….eat something….”, and I stuff a chip in my mouth, my body seems to say, “Hm….that tastes good, not enough of what I needed, but hey - eat more!!! Maybe that'll stop these cravings.”

After a while, I'll tire of the chips and it's as if my body says, “I’m still in need of more nutrition…..find something else to eat!". So, I'll grab a cookie, then another, and another, but none of it really “satisfies”.  They just add empty calories that my body has to store as fat.  

Ok, maybe that sounds silly, or over-simplified, but I do notice that when I feel the need to eat, and I give myself “junk” food, the hunger isn’t satisfied.  I think it’s because my body is asking for NUTRITION, not just empty calories.  

When I give my body the healthy, nutritional foods it craves – whole grains, fresh veggies & fruits, meat, dairy – that hunger is satisfied much quicker and stays satisfied much longer.   I simply find I’m not drawn to as much “junk” as before therefore I don’t “camp out” in the kitchen as often.

I still enjoy my sweets now and then, or a chip or two, but they become more like a "treat" and less like the "main course".  Better to fill up on low calorie/nutrien-dense foods.  Let the high calorie ones be a "treat". 

Anyway, I'll get off my nutritional soapbox and on with showing you exactly what is involved when we bring in a grain order from Wheat Montana Farms!   

My orders must be a minimum of 5,000 pounds so each grain order is a "community" effort!  First, I create the order form, which involves lots of math!  

I email it out to all our customers, and they are wonderful at helping us reach that big goal!  In fact, sometimes we go way over that goal - up to almost 13,000 pounds! We must work as a team to make each order happen and I'm blessed with a wonderful "team" of those who order!  

(*Grain has gone really high in price right now due to many reasons - too much rain in some areas, too little rain - drought-  in other areas, and just a general lack of grain world-wide.  It's creating quite a shortage.  Read

 about it at http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-12-17-wheat_N.htm?csp=34).

Our dear friends came to help us unload the last order, (*it was around 12,000 or 13,000 pounds) and they also wrote about it on their blog - http://www.milkandhoneyacres.com/search/label/Spencer.  (Check out their site, too, at Milk & Honey Acres!  And be sure to see “Uncle Bob”!) 

As you’ll see in their photos, the grain comes in mainly 3 sizes:

• 25 pound bags
• 50 pound bags
• 45 pound pails

The bags or pails are stacked on a wooden pallet. Each wooden pallet holds about 2500 pounds (*so that's either 50 bags per pallet, or 36 pails per pallet).

Once the pallet is full, Wheat Montana wraps some plastic-wrap – (*similar to what your mom uses in the kitchen only bigger and stronger) – around the entire stack to keep bags of grain from falling off.  

The pallets are loaded into the back of a big 18-wheeler truck.   Wheat Montana won’t usually send a truck out until it's full so we sometimes have to “wait” for grain deliveries to come our way. 

A day or two before it's arrival, the trucking company will call and give an approximate delivery date. 

We used to have them delivered in odd places – anywhere from home driveways, to parking lots of vacant buildings to borrowed warehouses.  Several years ago, we realized the need to have our own place that we could depend on anytime the truck showed up – day or night. 

So, we now have a physical “store” with a loading dock!  We sell mills, grains and other healthy things year round now. 

We also use our shop to teach others how to mill.  We even give them some of our own "family" recipes when they buy their mills from us.  This way they can jump right into making delicious things like fresh, whole grain blueberry muffins right from the start!  Our goal is to make this process and journey as simple for them to undertake as possible!

Another reason we secured our own store was to protect the grain.  Those 25 and 50 pound bags are just layers of brown kraft paper.  If they get wet, the grain could mold. 

Moldy grain is a dangerous thing to eat.  It is so dangerous that it can even hurt something as big as a HORSE! 

We once had a truck show up to deliver grain during one of our very few snow storms!   Do you know how RARE a snow storm is here in the South? 

My fingers got so cold, I couldn’t turn the pages of sales tickets to fill orders!  I was really glad when that order was finished and I could go home to get warm and drink some hot cocoa!

To get the grain off the truck, my husband uses a pallet "jack"  It reminds me of a giant car jack that you use to lift the car when changing a flat tire!  The bright yellow pallet jack is slid under a pallet of grain, then it “lifts” the pallet up so it can be slid off the truck and into the back of the warehouse where we unload it. 

One day I hope to build a place that’s better suited to these grain orders.  Until I do, we have to unload each pallet by hand after it’s off the truck because the door to our back storage room is too small for the pallet jack to fit through.

As we empty each wooden pallet, we also take “inventory”.  This means we count each and every bag or pail so we can be sure everything arrived safely. 

Sometimes we’ll have a bag break, or a bag missing, but Wheat Montana does an excellent job so it doesn't happen much or often.

Once, when a bag broke in the back of the truck, the kernels were swept off the truck, onto the ground. 

A while later, we had the most beautiful, tall WHEAT growing there at the loading dock!   It's proof that Wheat Montana’s grains still have their sprouting abilities.   That's good news for those who like to grow sprouts at home!

In the photo on the Milk & Honey Acres blog, http://www.milkandhoneyacres.com/search/label/Spencer, you can see the beginnings of a stack of bags.  That’s the room we use mainly for grain storage.   

Grain does best when it’s kept

• COOL and
• DRY and
• OFF THE FLOOR

so we try and do that with the grain we stock to sell.  

Since this order was rather large, when the workers were finished stack it, there was only about 6 inches of space before hitting the ceiling! 

I’m quite short so as my husband left for work, I said, “Hey…..how am I supposed to REACH that high for those bags?”  He had to bring some of them lower for me, plus I still had to stand on a CHAIR to reach them! 

Once it’s all unloaded and counted, customers come by and pick up their orders and the shop becomes quite busy!   Things calm down in-between grain orders, but we still have people drop by each week to shop.  New people come in to see a demonstration of a mill so they can start milling whole grains into flour, too.  We keep some of the bags on hand to sell grain, too, until 3 to 4 months goes by and it’s time for the NEXT grain order! 

So, now you know how we work one portion of our business here at My Favorite Things.  Check it out at www.grainlady.com and be sure to click on “A Kid’s Story of Wheat” on the right hand side of the front page!  It’s a “book”, filled with the story of wheat! 

Until next time-

cindy

Posted by sadie423

Very interesting post....I have been thinking seriously about milling my own flour these days instead of the processed stuff at the store....so I enjoyed reading

Posted by ckroske

Thanks for the comment! Milling is really as simple as pushing the button on a blender! You pour the grain into the "hopper" of the mill, turn it on, and flour drops down into the flour pan. Amazingly simple and if you use recipes that are already designed for freshly milled whole grain, you usually get excellent results. The hard part comes when you take long time family favorites and try to make them "healthier". Some recipes convert easily, but in some, the taste/texture can be greatly altered. I can give suggestions on that if anyone is ever interested. Thanks again - cindy