Kind of sad….and eerie….creepy, even.......but a good idea.

I like seeds – love plants!

Did I ever tell you that……

I managed the Display department for a large department store,

and it all began when I volunteered to water their pitiful, dehydrated, sickly plants!  ;o)

Anyway, here’s what I know….

• the vault is underground in Norway – owned by Norway, but the countries own the seeds they deposit there.
• it’s designed to protect the world’s seeds from climate changes, war, nuclear strike, natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, etc.
• it can hold 4.5 million seed sample packages, I think, each containing 500 seeds!
• there are 1400 other seed vaults in the world, and this one is the “back-up” for all!
• giant air-conditioners bring the temp down to minus 0.4 Fahrenheit
• the seeds can last 1000 years at that temperature!
• if the air conditioners fail, the permafrost around the seed vault will keep it cold another 200 YEARS!  That’s like, “Hey, the power’s out….don’t open the freezer door, ok?!!!”

There’s also another seed vault that holds 1 billion seeds in Sussex, England.  It’s more for “wild” seeds, while the Norway project is attuned to agricultural seeds, designed to insure an adequate food supply in case of castastrophe.  

You can read an article about the Norway project HERE (*at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332330,00.html) and you can watch a video of the Norway Project, then a video of the Sussex project in England will come immediately afterwards.   It’s at http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/25/norway.seeds/index.html.  

Real Simple magazine (*www.RealSimple.com) lists 23 things you can get for FREE!

Like on April 17^th, you can get a FREE cone of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream!

Go HERE to read about it! (*or http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/02/11/roym.rs.free/index.html)

(*Parents, please monitor your child's time on the internet.  I can't fully vouch for these sites so "tour" them at your own risk, ok?  Thanks!)

Want to see WAVES of ice in Antarctica?

Click on  Urban Legends Reference Pages: Antarctica Wave or go to http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/antarcticwave.asp _________________________________________

Want to see an ICY Switzerland, too?!

Go HERE   (*or at http://www.jibjab.com/view/110421)

 Or click on Icicles pictures from winter scenics photos on webshots (*or at http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/557603804KrjJHf)  

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

There was a total eclipse of the moon tonight! 

A reader of my newsletter, "The Forum", shared a newsletter from the Classical Astronomy homeschool e-newsletter.  Check them out at: http://www.classicalastronomy.com/The_Sky_This_Month.asp where they also share dates/times of other, upcoming lunar eclipses.

Another reader shared the Nasa Eclipse Home Page: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html   

I think it lists times eclipses will be seen all over the earth!

So, lay a blanket on the ground, stare up at the stars and enjoy! 

:O)  cindy    

I wrote the National Wildlife Federation (http://www.nwf.org/) to ask about services on their websites for Educators, (*specifically homeschool moms and dads, like us!)

They wrote back, "We have a few sites for Educators.  First, for animal research and questions we have www.enature.com, this site has information on plants and animals, excellent for science biology.  We have www.frogwatch.org, this site is a documenting site based on research of how knowing what is happening to frog affects humans. 

Next we have www.climateclassroom.org, this site has a Educators guide to help teach about global warming, with downloads for a slide show.  We also have www.greenhour.org.  This is a site to help Educators encourage children to go out side and play.  Lastly we have www.nwf.org, under magazines then under Ranger Rick, there is a green idex with an Edcuator's Guide.  In this guide there are activities, some with plans for Educators, games, stories and more.  We hope you have fun exploring this and all the other sites."

I've had fun touring some of these sites, and so far here were a few of my favorite pages!

http://www.nwf.org/yellowstone/ - click on an animal and you can learn more about them!

http://www.enature.com/home/ - Use their field guide to search more than 5,500 species!

This is great because I clicked on snakes, and could click on the snake's photo again to enlarge it some!  They have reptiles, amphibians, insects - oh wow, we could spend some MAJOR time on that site!