How We Got Our Wheat

Grain in Egypt

....And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities.... And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea.... And the seven years of plenteousness, that was in the land of Egypt, were ended. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. -Genesis 41:47-54

We Use Wheat

We grind our wheat into flour for cooking and especially to bake our bread. We figure freshly ground wheat is better for us. The oils and vitamins have not oxidized as they do in store-bought flour, and whole wheat contains more fiber than white flour. When we first started grinding our own flour bread makers told us to use Prairie Gold Wheat (formerly called Golden 86) from Wheat Montana Farms. Prairie Gold is higher in protein than other wheat (18%) and has a light texture when ground making it bake more like white flour but keeping all the benefits of whole wheat.

We store up our wheat as the popular preparedness guide Making the Best of Basics recommends. This book gives guidelines for storing and suggests using wheat as the our second most basic family food staple after water. Since the times when Joseph stockpiled grain in Egypt anticipating seven years of famine, people have relied on wheat for their daily food and fallen back to it in hard times. "Eat your bread and water." Have you ever read how the poor long ago lived on bread and water? If we came down to those sort of times, bread and water would do as well again.

Until Recently...

We used to order our wheat from Walton Feed on Idaho. But since the Y2K frenzy set in, Walton has fallen far behind in meeting their orders. This spurred me on to find another source for Prairie Gold Wheat and to learn to store it myself.

So I woke up one morning with a project.

Journal of Project: Get Wheat

#1: find wheat

• Monday, 8:00am - I look in our food co-op catalog but they do not sell Prairie Gold Wheat. They do sell wheat, just not the type I want.
• 9:00 - So I call Wheat Montana Farms directly and they tell me I need to order a minimum of 4000lb of wheat before they will ship it to me. But they do give me the number of someone in my area who regularly orders wheat from them.
• 9:15 - I call this person and we set up a good working relationship buying 50lb bags for $16 each.

#2: find containers

• We used to go to grocery store bakeries and get used 5 gallon frosting containers for $2. But these are not good enough. They are hard to seal and re-seal and are not as air tight as I need ours to be. They are not really meant to be reused except for the around-the-house jobs we've been giving them up 'till now.
• 9:30 - We go to a local restaurant supply store that I find in the Yellow Pages and buy 5.5 gallon ingredients containers for $8. These containers are clear and have durable lids that are easy to open and close. But these containers are too expensive and they also do not seal tightly enough.
• 1:00pm - I look in the U. S. Plastics catalog and find 5 gallon buckets with tight rubber seals for about $5. But these have the type of lids that are very hard to put on and get off, and are not intended to be reused often. They also sell Gamma Seal reusable screw on lids for these buckets. But I figure they will cost an extra $6 in addition to the $5 for the buckets themselves.
• 1:15 - Then someone on the Christian Self-Reliance Email List tells me about M&M Industries. M&M sells "Life Latch" containers. These buckets range in size from ½ gallons to 11.3 gallons and have ingenious reusable screw-on lids with tight rubber seals. These containers are FDA and UN certified for hazardous materials, biological waste and food. One 6.5 gallon bucket costs about $7 with UPS shipping included. M&M sent me a free sample of their two largest containers when I asked about them.
• 1:30 - We order 32 of their 6.5 gallon containers and received them in less than a week.

We intend to keep our wheat for less than five years and so we do not need to guard against the semi-gas-permeable HDPE walls of our buckets. They will keep out an adequate amount of oxygen and moisture for five years. But if we were to store wheat for a longer time or store more sensitive foods such as dried milk we would use Mylar coated foil bags, oxygen absorbing packets and descant (humidity absorbing) packets.

#3: find dry ice

Dry Ice is pure carbon dioxide in solid form. Carbon dioxide is an inert gas that will replace the oxygen in our buckets of wheat. Without oxygen all the little grain weevil eggs will suffocate and die.

• 2:00 - I look up dry ice in the yellow pages and found Whitey's Ice Cream sells it for $1 per pound in a nearby town.

#4: storage area

Dad had remodeled a room in our house next to our kitchen and turned it into a pantry. We stack some of our containers on the floor and put some on shelves.

#5: put it all together

• Friday, 9:00am - Today is a good dry day to put all these parts together. I want as little moisture in our wheat as possible.
• I wrap 1/2 pound chunks of dry ice in sheets of newspaper and set each one on the bottom of a container.
• I pour in a bag of wheat on top of the ice.
• I loosely close the lids of the containers for two or so hours until all dry ice is sublimated (melted) into gas. I can tell when the ice is done by a simple test: I seal the lid of a container and wait ten minutes and if when I open it I hear a hiss as pressure dissipates, I know the ice is not done. I need to wait a few more minutes.
• When all the ice turned to colorless, odorless carbon dioxide I close the lid tightly.
• I stack the buckets three high in our pantry

We will open our buckets as we need wheat. Every year we plan to restock our little private wheat granary in this same way.

Other Grains, Beans & Seeds

Other grains, beans and seeds can be stored in similar manner for varying lengths of time. Both Making the Best of Basics and Prudent Food Storage have the storage life for all these.

Joseph in Egypt

It probably took Joseph much longer to stockpile his grain, but then he didn't have plastic containers. But, on the other hand ancient Egyptians probably were not so adverse to eating a few weevils in their famine rations.

I pray God will honor our diligence to prepare for the future.

Resources

Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook

by James Talmage Stevens

I was first introduced to the idea of stocking up when my father bought this book at a Homeschool convention. Many people recommend this book and as it is again available in a revised edition it still remains the most popular book among families who are preparing for an uncertain future. The strength of this book is its simplicity and emphasis on just what the title identifies - basics.

Mr. Stevens persuaded us to: (1) move our family's staple diet towards more basic foods made from scratch, (2) create an in-home grocery store in which we have everything we normally eat stockpiled, (3) Store what we eat, eat what we store, rotate, rotate, rotate!

And he provides information on the storage life of many different foods, how much to store per person and how best to store the food.

This book can be ordered through any book store.

Prudent Food Storage

by Alan T. Hagan

I found this book at the Walton Feed website and printed it out. The few bits of information Making the Best of Basics did not have for me, this book supplied. It gives a more detailed explanation of how to use dry ice, oxygen absorbers, descants and Mylar bags and also gave practical tips on how to store every type of grain, bean and other foods. It lists many of the best preparedness and food preserving suppliers in the back.

Mr. Hagan compiled the FAQ from the misc.survivalism newsgroup in this book and offers version 3.0 free at several sites on the Web. You can also order it from him for $18 at: A.T. Hagan Box 140008, Gainesville, FL 32614.

Walton Feed

135 North 10th, PO Box 307
Montpeiler, ID 83254
www.waltonfeed.com

Walton is very well known for providing staple storage foods for many years. Recently they have been overwhelmed with orders despite expanding their facilities. They are far behind on their orders, and this is why many people are turning to preserving their own foods.

Wheat Montana Farms & Bakery

10778 Highway 287
Three Forks, MT 59752
1-800-535-2798
www.wheatmt.com

Wheat Montana sells their own variety of wheat specially selected for bread making, along with other grains, beans and cereal. Their wheat is very high in protein (18%) and world renowned among home bakers for making the best whole wheat bread.

United States Plastic corp.

1390 Neubrecht Road
Lima, OH 45801
1-800-537-9724
www.usplastic.com

US Plastics carries any plastic container, bag, bucket, sheet, hose, rack, crate, tray, nozzle, tank, or anything else made of plastic you can think of.

M&M Industries, Inc.

316 Corporate Place
Chattanooga, TN 37419
1-800-331-5305
www.m-m-industries.com

They carry the "Life Latch" containers: ½ - 11.3 gallon buckets with ingenious screw-on tight sealing lids. These containers are FDA and UN certified for hazardous materials, biological waste and food. M&M will gladly send you a sample of any container for free when you ask.

NITRO-PAK Preparedness Center

Two-Be-Prepared Way
Heber, UT 84032
1-800-866-4876
www.nitro-pak.com

NITRO-PAK is one of the most widely used preparedness suppliers. They offer every sort of emergency survival supplies you can imagine including Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers.

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