An organic farm in Central Alberta. Certified organic heirloom and ancient grains and legumes. On-farm stone-milled flour products. Cooking, baking and strawbale house living. Farm life.
I really like the message that Dr. Davis is bringing the world. It is a message that we have been on about for some time now. Modern varieties of livestock, plants and grains are simply not all that they have been made out to be. Dependant upon anti-biotics and chemical inputs, they work just fine. However, heritage varieties are healthier, cleaner and more durable in every possible manner.
We will have more information posted soon regarding the dietary benefits of diets that contain heritage and ancient grains and flours that are 100% whole grain or "entire grain" products. Stay tuned.
A fine loaf of sourdough from one of our great customers @_BrendaLe
"{bread} contains more nutrients per weight than meat, milk, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables (Thomas, 1976)."
An interesting article from McGill University on bread and cereal grains. This is a must read for those who are interested in human nutrition and grains. This information, combined with Dr. Davis' book Wheat Belly, confirm in my mind the need for better education on modern wheat varieties and how they are poisoning us and the absolute need to revert back to the older, heritage varieties of grains. http://eap.mcgill.ca/publications/EAP35.htm
Over the years, we have found that the Park variety of wheat has been the most successful for us in our organic rotation. Park is a heritage variety that was finally released to the public in 1963. It has a lineage of parents that go back directly to North America's first commercial wheat "Red Fife".
Park Wheat - 1963 from "Thatcher"
Thatcher - 1935 from "Marquis" and a Durum variety (maybe this is why Park makes such great pasta?)
Marquis - 1910 from "Red Fife" and "Hard Red Calcutta"
Red Fife - 1885 See a bit of it's history in my video below.
We have grown several different varieties of wheat over the years. Our professional bakers have always been our best source of information as to the actual baking qualities of different wheats. Park Wheat flour from our farm is currently being used exclusively in Bon Ton Bakery's Heritage Whole Wheat loaf and other select products in their store.
This is the same wheat that my Grandfather grew in the 60's and 70's and today it produces as well as it did then. Park is our main wheat variety and as a heritage variety, we'll protect it for future generations to enjoy.
Here is the definitive article on the subject of the consumption of wheat and the "gluten free" fab dieters who have it all wrong.
Read the whole article through. Anyone who has ever talked to me at my table will have heard the same speech and long before I ever came across this article (5 mins ago).
Modern wheat varieties are bad. They are indeed killing us. Modern flour production practices are bad and again, are slowly killing us.
"It could turn out that if we wind back the clock 100 or 1,000 years, and resurrect einkorn or some of the heritage forms of wheat, maybe that would be a solution." Dr. William Davis
Eat whole, raw, unprocessed "entire grain" flour. Buy it from local producers who are growing heritage varieties of wheat and your gluten concerns go away. There is a lot of research that shows eating all of the raw bran and germ from a wheat kernal will in fact lower the glycemic index and HELP with weight control.
Don't be a sheep. Look for good quality food and follow your common sense. People have not de-evolved from eating wheat over the past 20 years when we've been eating it for 10 of thousands of years. What's changed then? The wheat.
I just had such a great day yesterday. First, I stopped off at Alberta Avenue Community Hall to visit the Seedy Sunday festival. It was wonderful to see so many other people concerned about seed security and food safety. Also, just plain old gardening fun during a period of weather where Spring just doesn't want to arrive.
I made a bee-line over to see Lola Canola first. Patty was giving a talk about planting for pollinators. I couldn't stay to listen. Did anyone get a chance to hear her speak? I am sure it was entertaining and informative.
Next stop was to see Jim Ternier from Prairie Garden Seeds. I admire Jim's work and I've talked to him a few times about heritage grains. This was my first face to face with Jim and we got to chat about Kamut and Red Fife for a few minutes. I managed to buy the last pack of Red Fife and a packet of Medora Durum Wheat. Those were two good scores for my collection.
Jim Ternier from Prairie Garden Seeds
The real reason I was in the area though was to present and attend the Beyond the Supermarket event at the Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts. This was a cafe style 'tradeshow' where customers and producers could intermingle and exchange ideas and present their businesses. I found it to be a tremendous venue to really connect with potential customers and other producers. I certainly appreciated the chance to be there and say a few words about our farm and heritage grains. It was attended almost to capacity and I suspect that next year the venue will be a little bigger. Still though it was very comfortable and cozy. It was very easy, and encouraged, to eavesdrop on conversations and learn about other businesses providing local food to Edmontonians.
The very best thing about yesterday though was meeting with all of my new friends and customers. I saw a tweet from Super_Su and I sure appreciate her support all the time. All of the conversations are so enjoyable...from talking with people who are planning their new self-sufficient lifestyles to bakers and restaurant professionals to small-holding future farmers...it was a very good day.
This year, with the move and everything, I was only able to plant two very small plots of heritage grains. They are both barley varieties. The top picture is the Tibetan Barley. It did remarkably well this year. The heads are full and it stood up well to some of the downpours and high winds we experienced. If this were in a large field, it would have yielded very well indeed.
The barley below is Purple Barley. I believe it is also of Tibetan decent. It did not perform nearly as well as the Tibetan. The heads are small, short. The kernels look nice and plump though and are indeed purple. It doesn't show up in the picture, but you can see the purple colour within the hull. As you can see it did lodge quite a bit in the summer storms. If this crop was in a larger field, it would not look very good at all and would be difficult to harvest. I am encouraged to keep up with the trials of the Tibetan variety. I will also propagate the purple stuff and see if I can't get a better variety over the years.
Harvesting (Combining) the seed plots once they get too big to harvest by hand becomes more of a challenge. I have been agonizing over the purchase of a newer, larger combine for the past year. I have pretty much made up my mind to buy an International 914. It is a large pull-type combine from the late 70’s. It is a conventional combine as opposed to a rotary so it is simple and cheap to repair; and I have the 3788 2+2 to pull it with. They are a good sized combine for under $2000! With this new combine I will be able keep the Gleaner C2 free to harvest the smaller plots and just clean it out between plots. It is small enough to clean very easily. I am always on the lookout for another C2 sized combine. They are less than $1000 and usually closer to free!
To harvest the grains from our very small test and seed plots I simply cut the heads off of the still standing plants and place them in a threshing box. This is a simple wooden box with wood slats on the bottom. I place the heads in the box, step in and shuffle my feet for a minute or two. I then take the air compressor and blow out the chaff. It is a great way to obtain a completely clean sample from a small plot of grain. It really doesn’t take much time at all. Of course the grain heads need to be completely dry prior to attempting threshing otherwise they will not want to come off the head cleanly.
In order to grow the varieties into commercially viable quantities I plant the grains in progressively bigger plots and fields. I did this with the Blais Red Fife in 2009. I now have 15 bushels of Blais Red Fife which will seed about 7 acres in 2010. I always maintain a set of very small farm implements like my old John Deere seed drill for these purposes.
I have plans to establish more test plots and to expand the seed bases of the grains I have already tested.
We have established another garden in the yard by moving some fencing in an existing corral. This will free up some space in the garden up by the kitchen. We have used the “Kitchen Garden” (bottom photo) almost exclusively for our gardening needs for the past 10 years. It has always been full, but now with the need for space for grain tests we needed another garden.
We will plant the “three sisters” in the new “Corral Garden” (top photo). It is already high in nitrogen from years of hay and straw residue and cattle/pig manure. The soil is dark and in a bit of a low spot. It will have sufficient moisture all year long. I have some heritage corn, pumpkin and bean seed saved from last year and I have some additional heritage corn seed from Salt Spring Seeds.
We will plant some test plots of grain in the kitchen garden. I will only plant half of what I have in stock of each variety. That way, in case of some sort of disaster, I will not have depleted my grain seed stock completely. We need to grow the test plots within the farmyard; otherwise the deer will destroy them completely. We have a bit of a deer problem here as we are in the middle of the famous Edmonton Bow Zone of whitetail hunting. Hunters are always welcome on our farm!
A very important question was posted by Rich in Oklahoma..."Do you have any experience or thoughts about how heritage wheat compares to the typical wheat grown today from a farmer's perspective? As an example, does it need less or more fertility, is it more or less disease prone, etc.."
I will attempt to answer this question, but perhaps there are some others that will have more to add in the comments section.
We have found that the heritage varieties require less fertility on average to reach their potential yields than compared to the modern wheats. One interesting observation was made this past year when I made the decision to seed an old Red Spring Wheat in to a field that had next to zero in the way of nitrogen. This field hadn't had a legume on it for 15 years (we've only had it for 2 years). It was one of my cleaner fields from the crop of buckwheat that I took off in 08 and I was trying to get a good clean crop of seed wheat from it. I wasn't terribly worried about yield or protein/falling number. It ended up with 13.5% protein and turned into an excellent baking wheat. The yield was actually pretty good considering the horrible drought we experienced this past summer...somewhere around 20 bu/acre. Keep in mind that I had fields nearby that were below 10 bu/acre!
I don't know if I have a solid answer for you on the disease issue. There were a couple reasons that heritage breeds went by the wayside. 1)There were some disease issues in the early part of the 20th century that caused huge wipeouts in wheat crops...rust comes to mind. Of course that led ag. researchers to develop new rust and disease resistant varieties 2) It became profitable to come up with your own wheat variety, register it and sell it to people. The large corporations became so good at it that that is pretty much all we have for seed nowadays. (ie canola, corn, soybeans).
One of the tremendous benefits of heritage breed grains is that they are landrace breeds. Meaning they have huge genetic diversity within their species. My feeling is that whatever seed that has survived to this day has been naturally selected to be as disease resistant as their modern counterparts. Now this is not a scientific claim...just a theory based on my limited knowledge of genetics and simple observation. We have not had any problems whatsoever with disease on either our modern or heritage varieties of wheat.
This genetic diversity is also what makes heritage wheats so valuable to farmers. I can grow a spring wheat up here in Canada...send it to Rich in OK and Rich would be able to grow it as good as I can within 2 years of seeding it. The plants that flourished in the OK climate would be seeded again next year. There is enough genetic material in the field that no matter the growing conditions, the crop would adapt and flourish within a very short time...especially with some selective harvesting and seed production.
I have also definitely noticed a difference in protein and taste. Some varieties seem to be better baking wheats with higher proteins than others and there is a definite difference in taste, colour and baking characteristics between the species. I can make a wheat like Park or Red Fife have a good protein number by planting them in a high nitrogen field like a clover plow-down, but as I discovered this year. Some varieties produce good proteins without this nitrogen fertility.
I question the claims about modern wheat varieties being more productive as far as yield is concerned. I mean they can grow wheat crops now in the 100 bu/acre range, but I am skeptical about whether that is the variety or the fertility inputs used. Perhaps it is like Round-up Ready Canola...a wheat variety that responds best to a certain fertility input that you purchase as a package?
As you can see in the video above. I can achieve some pretty nice yields with organic practices and less modern varieties. This field was the first year after a spring alfalfa plow-down. It was Park Wheat (a 60's variety). It yielded in the range of 50 bu/acre. You can see the same field below being seeded that same year.
We have just joined the Salt Spring Seeds - Seed and Plant Sanctuary For Canada program. Dan Jason, owner of Salt Spring Seeds, has an extensive collection of heritage based seeds for the field and garden. We have bought seeds from them in the past. The service that Dan offers is tremendous. I submitted my $20 payment via paypal yesterday afternoon (to join the Seed Sanctuary charity group) and right away I received an e-mail from Dan that the seeds I requested will be in the mail today! I am going to spend a little time this winter writing about the various heritage plants that we have grown around the farm in the past.
The Seed and Plant Sanctuary works like this. A $20 active membership gives you access to the seeds of the Sanctuary. You can choose up to five varieties from their databases. If you send the sanctuary records of how they do, you will be entitled to choose another five varieties the next time around. As long as you continue to maintain varieties and let Salt Spring Seeds know about them, your initial membership fee keeps you as an active member.
I will catalogue the different plant varieties that we have on hand and I will try to provide some notes on how well the various plants have performed for us. We currently farm about 300 acres of certified organic land. It is my goal to be growing 100% of our acreage in heritage crops. In order to achieve that though, I also have to market these heritage crops and be able to readily sell them. The new flour mill should help in that regard. There are numerous opportunities for heritage flour to be produced and sold in our little region alone.
