Grainswest Magazine Article - Bakeries & Farmers & Millers

http://www.grainswest.com/2015/08/rise-and-shine/

A new store!

photo courtesy Amaranth Whole Foods

Cindy is putting the order together today and will be delivering to Amaranth Foods in St. Albert! This will be our second store in St. Albert so we're excited to have a really good foothold in one of our home towns (we have 2 home towns...Morinville and St. Albert). Grapevine Deli, located in historic downtown St. Albert has done very well for us in sales for 2 years now, but Amaranth Whole Foods Market located in the Enjoy Centre will help us cover all of the bases for customers in St. Albert.

As our retail locations expand, we are happy to be able to introduce new customers to our whole and healthful grain and flour products. I do know that Amaranth has ordered our Einkorn Flour as well as other popular products that we produce. Please help support these great local businesses as well as our own. And if you don't see something that you want in their stores, I know they appreciate hearing from you.

Enjoy!

Explore Local Foods, Local Markets Event

I still miss our pigs...

Myself and Ron Erdmann of Erdmann's Gardens and Greenhouses will be headlining this event on January 16th near Barrhead. This is an event being hosted by Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development and should be very interesting for anyone thinking of starting a farm based, direct sales business. It could also be a great venue if you are a well established marketer to be able to share your experiences and perhaps pick up some tips from others. I know that I am looking forward to learning as much or more than I share. Here is the link to the event

I will be speaking about our experiences in starting our farm business. The information I have learned through experience about small scale farming, marketing, sales and social media. The importance of selling and more importantly what are we actually selling? The answer may surprise you.

One of our early ventures...potatoes

I will also share some of the stories of the trials in my transition back to farming after leaving the large grain operation that my Dad had going. I'll let you know about the livestock we've tried, the crops we've experimented with, the equipment we've gone through. Most of these stories are amusing I can assure you. I will also let you know where we are now and what are our plans for the future of our farm.

I am hopeful that I will be able to give everyone some good ideas on achieving sustainability for your farm and maybe provide some additional ideas for direct marketing your products. 

Here is the google map of Summerdale Hall. I hope to see many of you on January 16th!

Ruiskakut Cookies - Traditional Christmas Favorite

Ruiskakut Cookies

These cookies originated in Finland (one posting I found said they originate in the land of Karelia, which includes parts of Finland and Russia) and as far as I can tell they are a winter/Christmas treat. They are sometimes called Estonian Rye Cookies.

They are mainly made with a whole grain rye flour and are often served as appetizers with a cream cheese spread or fruit preserves. ""

The few recipes that I found were all pretty much the same. I took the simplest one and made it as "100 mile" as possible.

1 cup of softened butter

2/3 cup honey (the original recipe called for granulated sugar)

2 cups whole grain rye flour

1 cup soft wheat flour (Spelt Flour would be a great substitute)

3 tbsp water 

NOTE: I didn't add the water as my dough was still quite soft. Instead I added a touch more flour and let it firm up a bit in the fridge before rolling.

Beat the butter until smooth. Add honey and beat until fluffy. 

Add flours and mix until just combined.

Add water if needed to hold dough together OR knead in additional flour if dough is too soft to roll out. Wrap in plastic and chill if needed.

Roll dough about 1/8" thick. Use a 3" wide scalloped cutter and then a 1" round cutter to create a "wreath".

Pierce all over with a fork. Add red and green decorating sugar crystals if desired.

Bake at 350F for about 8 min. They can become over done quite quickly so check at 7 min.

They are a thin, crisp yet tender cookie with a wonderful earthy flavour from the whole grain flours and honey.

A definite worth while cookie to add to your Christmas traditions!

The above recipe was submitted to me by Deb Krause. She has a beautiful blog entitled Simple Pleasures Deb is also known as @DebTheLocavore on Twitter!

Italian Farmers Market - Turin, Italy

We are back from a wonderful trip to Torino, Italy for Terra Madre and Salone Del Gusto. It was incredible to say the least to be able to spend time in Italy doing not much more than tasting slow food. Chefs, artisans, farmers and producers from all across the globe were there celebrating their foods and successes. Anyone interested in food and culinary arts simply has to attend this massive celebration held every two years in Italy's 4th largest city. 

Huge permanent coverings over the market square.

However, it was on our daily roaming through the city that we came across the traditional markets of Europe. Held daily, rain or shine at various places throughout the city there is no place to better sample the local foodstuffs in their most pure form. Truffles, Italian mandarin oranges, charcuterie and cheeses of every imaginable kind, fresh meats and seafood, and of course, Italian baking. The markets contain anything you would ever need to create an Italian feast every single day of the week (except Sundays of course).  

Our favorite farmer at the local market. Eggs aren't refrigerated.

We visited these markets whenever we could and bought various kinds of treats that would sustain us through the rest of the day, but it was little hollow. All I could think about was the fact that our hotel did not have a kitchen so that I could properly get into Italian food. We settled for some wonderful Trattatoria's for our evening meals and snacked on mandarins, cheese, salami and bread during our walks along the River Po in the afternoons.

Clothes at a Turin market

The markets are obviously important to Italians as they are established in permanent locations with city infrastructure covering them. In the evening these market squares are used for paid parking. 

Throughout most of Torino, people live in apartments so the population is dense, but we didn't see one single supermarket during our travels in the city. The market was the only place other than a mini-market or small specialty shop to purchase what you would need. Furthermore, the markets didn't just contain food. On one side of the street, under a huge covering was the food, nothing but food. On the other side, another huge covering; but here you would find whatever else you needed for everyday life. Sewing supplies, fabric, cleaning products, clothes, shoes, you name it. Not a single craft in sight, no re-selling prints of "crying fairies", no artwork of Elvis or the Beatles. How refreshing it was to see markets focus on what you needed to survive instead of a place to go walk the dog and have a bag of popcorn. 

Fresh seafood of every kind

Now, you're automatically going to assume that I am opposed to all superfluous things that go along with "Fido" peeing on my table cloth while the owner is busy with his 3 foot long bag of candied popcorn...I am not. I just cannot help but think that if Edmonton farmers markets began to take the entertainment component out of farmers markets, then the producers and farmers would begin to see increased sales from people who avoid the crowds and reluctantly go to a supermarket instead. I can only imagine how frustrating it has to be for people who come with all their shopping bags to have to dodge around Starbuck wielding parents pushing double-wide strollers parked in front of the Fairie Print table just to be able to get their shopping completed. At the very minimum, it would be nice to have the food and the crafts segregated to be able to allow shoppers to be uninterrupted by the browsers.

There is nothing wrong at all with a little ambience from the talented buskers, and in fact that is the one thing that I found wanting about Italian markets. They were, perhaps, a little too business-like and stark. But, most importantly, it works for the Italian producers and customers and its been working for thousands of years.

It appears to me that markets in Edmonton are getting bigger and bigger. Record attendances are made from time to time and yet sales amongst a lot of the vendors that I speak with are down or stagnant. Year to year at Strathcona Market we are up around 400% in 2012 yet our sales were flat at City Market 104 compared to 2011. City Market had huge numbers of vendors and record attendances. At one market more than 35,000 people attended. Why then are my sales down or similar over last year?...because people don't want to buy groceries in a crowd.

One of the side streets at a Turin market

There is one train of thought out there amongst farmers market manager it seems. Bring in as many people as you can so that there will be that much more exposure to vendors, and in turn will increase sales in the long run. That is surely a sound plan, but here's the problem. It would be like having a huge BBQ every single day that your hardware store is open. Bring in as many people as you can and hope that you sell some hammers along with the free burgers. But when I need another hammer, I am going to go to the place that is not so crowded. Where I can park and go buy my hammer without battling the crowds.

Here's my best example. At St. Albert Market, our best sales week this summer was an event related to food held at City Hall. The crowds were noticeably sparse. One of the worst weeks we had was the Cruising Weekend. Huge crowd. Bring food people to the market and food sales will increase. Bring tourists to the market and food sales will decrease. Farmers make and sell food. Farmers Markets, approved by Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, should be in existence for farmers to be able to sell food.

Cleaning supplies at the market

There would be a lot to change about Edmonton markets and how they are run, that's for sure. But, it is interesting to think how they could possibly change. Why not try to make markets supply things that we need to live like socks and underwear and soap and laundry detergent? Why not try to get people attending markets for necessities so they aren't forced to the farm-crushing superstores as often? Why not push the envelope of what we can produce or import as small business producers and farmers? Why not try?

Amazing cheeses!

The markets of Torino, Italy really opened my eyes to what successful markets are like. Markets that have run daily week after week for centuries.

In the meantime, we are grateful to have at least a few markets that attract foodies. Strathcona Market being the best by far. And, we are mostly grateful to our customers, who I know go out of their way to purchase our products. Without both a market and loyal customers, we'd be stuck in the commodity market along with the vast majority of other Alberta grain producers. 

Spring Seeding 2012

Garreth and a friend filling the small drills

The seeding season went fairly well. Between Chris, me and Dad we managed to get our fields tilled and seeding in record time this year. A full week earlier than last year. Even with our fields spread over creation, three people helped with the logistics of moving equipment and keeping things progressing. Son Garreth even got in some good tractor time helping out with cultivation and harrowing. He also helped here and there with cleaning out the seed drills and filling them between crops. We bought an old end-wheel seed drill for spreading Red Clover Seed in one of our fields. Our big drills don't have a grass box for such a task so it was necessary to purchase this old drill. It also worked well for seeding our smaller plots with the specialty grains. 

We are trying a few different things this year. As I mentioned earlier we planted some Red Clover. We did this as an underseed for our Oats and our Gold Flax. This will act as a nitrogen fixer in the soil for next years crop. We will plow it under next spring or perhaps this fall.

 Bags of Red Fife Seed

A few different wheats went into the ground this spring too. Red Fife, Park and Spelt. All three are heritage varieties and the Spelt is truly heritage as it is known to have been grown 6000 years ago!

Breaking Hayland

A lot of effort also went into breaking a piece of old hayland across the road. It is around 40 acres. Breaking hayland takes a lot of time and effort. The sod is difficult to break down into viable seedbed. We probably should have taken some time last fall to at least run over it with the chisel plow. But, we managed to get it seeded into Oats/Clover. Hopefully we will get a half decent crop of oats out of it and it will be ready for wheat next year.

Now, we gratefully watch the rain fall on newly seeded fields. What perfect timing! I finished seeding and it started raining the very next morning. The only things left to do is a little bit of harrowing on the oat seed, another disc of the field where the Hemp is going and then seeding Buckwheat in June. Fingers crossed for a warm, dry summer after some June rain. That's all I can do now.

Dr. Davis "Wheat Belly" on youtube

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.

stop eating wheat? how about Stop Eating Modern Wheat!

"The Bible says, "Give us this day our daily bread." Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the ancient wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans almost never eat.

Canada's first commercially viable wheat
from 1909 not ancient, but heritage.

Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high-yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize -- it promised to feed millions of starving around the world. Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick." 

  An excerpt from Mark Hyman's article in the Huffington Post.

The entire article can be accessed here.  This article by Dr. Hyman closely mirrors findings as outlined in Dr. Davis' book Wheat Belly that I am currently re-reading.  I only find it troubling that not enough emphasis is placed on the ancient varieties of wheat vs. modern. Dr. Hyman has spelled it out more clearly and I appreciate that.

Here's my view on the subject from a post I did a few weeks ago. 

Geoffrey McGill's baking!

Farmer Poached Eggs on Crusty Toast

Back in December Geoffrey came up to my table to purchase some supplies for his day long baking course he was hosting for some friends. That morning they had spent some time at Old Strathcona Farmers Market picking up the ingredients they would need for the various dishes that Geoffrey had planned. What I didn't expect was that he would take such wonderful pictures of the finished baking and share them with me. What a wonderful surprise! So, here they are for everyone to enjoy. 

Buon Pizza Margherita 

Pull Aparts

Dinner Buns

Crusty Rustic Bread

Focaccia with Roasted Market Vegetables

"Park" wheat - our heritage variety

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.

Heritage Grains vs. Modern Varieties

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.

Heritage Wheats

I have recently obtained samples of several varieties of heritage wheat. What is Heritage Wheat you may ask? Well, that is a good question and to be frank, I don't know. What I do know is that there are different answers to this question depending on who you ask. To me, a heritage wheat variety is one that is "antique". A variety that was developed say sometime prior to 1940. You see, it was about this time that the war effort was in full swing in laboratories across the world. New weapons were being developed that included chemicals that had the potential to defoliate and poison entire cultures of people. Luckily for us (tongue in cheek) these chemicals became the basis for modern agriculture. They magically and without consequence, enabled farmers to grow crops with fewer weeds, more productivity and in the case of dessication, shorter seasons. Oh yes, and on a lesser side note, some companies were able to make a few little profits.

So, after WWII these same agricultural companies who were busy developing different ways of poisoning the earth were also funding the development of their own breeds of grains. These varieties could survive the chemical baths that other, lesser species couldn't and therefore farmers could spray till their hearts content to get rid of weeds and bugs and other maladies. Soon, these new varieties were the predominant ones and the older varieties selected for natural resistance to lodging and growing seasons and competitiveness were forgotten. With such specific breeding and even genetic manipulation, the new varieties of grains are genetically uniform and very shallow in genetic material. The old breeds are known as landraces and are genetically very diverse. They are able to adapt within a few years to different climates and growing conditions and most importantly are not registered or owned by anyone in particular. Of course some of the antique varieties from the 20's and 30's were registered by hard working breeders in government ag. offices and farms across the continent. These breeds were naturally selected and crossed with other heritage varieties to produce plants with significant genetic diversity and traits that enabled wheat to be grown in places in Canada where shorter seasons or natural obstacles prevailed.

What all of this means is that the companies in question were able to enslave farmers and decieve them into believing that registered, copyrighted seeds in conjunction with associated chemicals were the only modern way to farm. As is the case with all other known forms of modern farming hierarchy, the people making the vast proportion of profits were in fact these companies...peddling their wares like modern day versions of the tonic hoaxsters of years past.

Luckily for us today there are enlightened farmers and most importantly, enlightened consumers who are demanding a return to intelligent and sustainable farming practices using landrace, community owned seeds and organic agronomy.