Long term wheat berries, from a 4th generation farmer.
Posted by ArcaneLuxian@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 55 comments
I grew up growing wheat. Red, white, club... spring, winter... let's say im very familiar with the process of how its done and what it takes. I'm not sure how many of y'all considered the long term wheat berry product needs for a family.
Lets take my family for a family of 5, 2 adults 3 children we'd need about 1200 lbs of wheat berries to sustain our needs for a year. Should the worst happen and you need long term storage of at least a year this is about 35-40, 5 gal buckets. Thats a lot of storage space for just wheat.
Now let's say youre a gardener or homesteader, you'd also need another 1.5x this amount, because its not 100% viable even at its best, to grow enough to continue sustaining your family. You'd also need at minimum half of an acre, assuming you have even a terrible harvest. Wheat isnt hard to grow but it is a space hog in more than one way.
incruente@reddit
Oh, I have ZERO doubt that the majority of the people with cases on cases of wheatberries have put no additional thought into the matter.
Oh, bread? Super. Do you have a mill? Is it electric; if so, do you have a source of power for it? Do you have spare parts for it? Have you actually tried to hand-crank enough flour for enough bread to keep your family fed?
You're all set on that? Great! Planning on using yeast? Hope you have a lot stockpiled. Oh, you're gonna do sourdough? Hope you've practiced making an edible whole-wheat sourdough loaf. What are you baking it in; does your oven have an electrical brain? You're gonna bake it in the dutch over in your fireplace? Hope that doesn't boil you alive in the middle of July indoors.
There_Are_No_Gods@reddit
I can't speak for others, but I've planned for and practiced much of that.
I have an electric grain mill for easy daily use as well as a manual mill that I built a setup for powering via a recumbent bicycle, which my 8 year old daughter has reasonably powered many times for half an hour stretches, generating enough flour for a couple loaves of bread. I've grown and harvested many pounds of wheat, processing it by smacking handfuls against the inside of a metal trash can. I've used commercially sourced sourdough as well as starting it completely from scratch with nothing but water and my own wheat flour. I've baked sourdough bread with nothing but water, a little salt, and the wheat I grew from seed I harvested from my own wheat.
Even with all that, I plan on using very little wheat in a long term SHTF situation. My main plain for renewable sustenance is potatoes. I grow enough every year to have enough to use the next year as seed potatoes for a large portion of my family's caloric needs. Wheat is a great prep too, but just not efficient enough in my experience to be the main source of calories. Corn is another thing I grow and store, both sweat and popcorn, but it too isn't really efficient enough to be the main calorie source. Potatoes just stand out well ahead of anything else from my research and personal experience.
I do love homemade whole wheat sourdough bread, though, and even in moderate amounts it would be a very welcome addition to a meal plan based more on potatoes.
Covert__Squid@reddit
Can you share your bike mill setup?
There_Are_No_Gods@reddit
I purchased a Country Living grain mill, which has a flywheel built into the hand crank mechanism. It's designed for easily connecting to a drive belt, from whatever source you happen to have.
I bolted the mill to a large piece of plywood that I put on the ground. I bought a cheap recumbent exercise bike from a local store, such as Walmart. I had an old V-belt from a riding lawnmower, taking off the front housing of the exercise bike and using that belt to connect the bike to the mill. I pulled the bike away from the mill until the tension was about right, and then I screwed a board to the plywood as a stopping block in front of the bike's front footing bar, such that the belt is slightly tipping the bike forward on its own, and then the belt is under a little tension when I sit on the bike. I've since added a few shims between the board and the bike's footer bar to re-tension the setup after the belt stretched a bit.
Then, it's just a matter of pouring some wheat berries into the hopper and pedaling the bike. It takes around 10 minutes of pedaling to make enough flour for a loaf of bread. This took my setup from "technically feasible" to "quite reasonable", as cranking by hand for half an hour or so is a real slog, both very boring and also strenuous on the arms, while pedaling for half the time while reading or watching a video or something flies by quickly, and it's low enough effort that children can do it too.
Note that it's possible to grind wheat too quickly and "cook" it undesirably. I checked the gear ratios, though, and the bike I found happened to have a reasonable size with respect to the mill's flywheel, such that it would be hard to go too quickly with this setup. It's just a side note of something I found while researching similar setups, which I'd not considered prior to reading about that aspect.
Covert__Squid@reddit
That’s awesome!
ArcaneLuxian@reddit (OP)
As I also do make my own sourdough, with regular bleached flour is know for a fact that whole wheat flour is a different process, the same in theory but unbleached wheat is a water hog. Also unless you have an excellent mill it will come out coarser than expected.
WG--TX@reddit
My wife bakes a lot of sourdough. We've used probably every flour you can get ahold of just experimenting. Bleached flour is relatively easy to bake with. Any fresh milled grain is not so simple at all. Know how to do it before you have to do it on this.
Flatbreads are one of my favorite go to's for milled grain. Salt, water, flour. So good.
ResolutionMaterial81@reddit
In my experience, excellent 'single pass' mills for fine flour is a "must have"! As are manual grain mills that are energy efficient (minimal amount of effort per cup of fine flour).
Friends who purchased the cheap Chinesium "monkey mills" regretted the purchase when actually started using them...LOTS of effort for a crappy flour.
FWIW; have 2 Country Living Grain Mills with accessories & an electric GrainMaster Whisper Mill, a Bosch Mixer with accessories, etc....over 2 decades old.
Yes, quality infrastructure is expensive, but never regretted the purchases.
SaveSummer6041@reddit
I keep trying to solve these problems one at a time.
Got electric and manual grain mills (don’t often use the manual). We do sourdough on a regular basis.
We have an electric and gas oven that can run without electricity.
I’ve been tempted to test cooking over the wood stove, but expect that to not go so well.
There’s a good amount of Amish around here, and I’ve been checking out their stoves and considering getting one - but it doesn’t fit well into a modern house.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Start by just trying to make a stew on your wood stove during a cold day when your running it anyway. There are ways to regulate the heat to an extent.
kj468101@reddit
I’ve thought about doing the soup stone method using a wood burning stove - heat stones in the fire, take out and add to pot of water to boil it and use that as a double boiler for general cooking. Or just add cans of food directly to the same pot as the stones.
Prevents me from having to keep the fire at full blast to make the outside top of the stove hot enough to then heat up a pan/pot and its contents. This won’t work well with baked goods however, but it’s a start. I have a bamboo steamer basket that would make steamed bread goods possible, but actual baking on a wood stove seems like it’ll require months of practice to do well and not waste ingredients, plus equipment. Maybe that time would be better spent building a tiny brick oven outdoors - then you can do pizza!
JRHLowdown3@reddit
It's a free standing wood stove not a fireplace correct? Does it have any flat surfaces on the top?
V2BM@reddit
I re-read Little House on the Prairie books as an adult a few years ago and recommend people read the story of how they survived a winter grinding nonstop so they didn’t starve.
I spend more on food preps but 90% of what I store for long term can be eaten out of a can or package cold, with a fork, and everything else needs just an open fire + a pot.
jon23d@reddit
We eat whole grains every day, basically boiling them. They are delightful and healthy and require little prep.
OtherwiseAlbatross14@reddit
Yeah I'm sure people storing wheat berries never thought about any of that. You must be sooo much smarter than everyone.
incruente@reddit
Be as sure as you like. I said the majority, not everyone.
Ok-Half6395@reddit
Wouldn't it be better to grow less wheat and expand the family diet instead? I feel like we rely heavily on wheat in the west (and it's rising in the east too). I'm firmly against long term storage if it's not rotated as it's just feeding one of, if not the most likely, SHTF situation for all of us. I'd also imagine growing such a large single crop in that kind of situation is risky. I would much rather grow as many different types of food that's practical and logical to get different nutrients and reduce the risk of starving if one crop fails.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
I don't think anyone with half a brain is suggesting ONLY storing wheat. The point is that it is one of the basic grains people should be storing along with rice, legumes, etc.
Ok-Half6395@reddit
That wasn't what I got from OP either. My point was that 1200lb for a family of 5 is a lot... 6 loaves of bread per week per person (according to chatgpt and Gemini). So unless their family is eating this amount normally then I would consider this long term hoarding which I don't agree with. They say they are a farmer which is why I questioned whether diversifying that 1 acre of land instead for different foods/nutrients would be better and also safer than growing so much of one crop which could fail and then you'd be left without your family's 30 loaves of bread per week. Most people don't even have 1 acre, let alone multiple acres of land to grow food in a SHTF situation.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
"Hoarding"... Really? Come on now... One of those media manipulated programming words designed to have a bad connotation. If someone is storing food now, ahead of problems, they are not "hoarding".
So your reply kinda is going in a circle- "most people don't have much land" BUT they shouldn't store much food?? Bit of a conundrum huh? Some with land/and regular food PRODUCTION usually argues they don't need as much food storage due to their production (I don't agree with that either).
The 300 lbs. per person per year was for when wheat forms the big basis of the grain based basic year supply. As mentioned in several other of my comments, most go more into rice than wheat and adjust the basis of the wheat down to 200lbs or even less PPPY.
Just bread? Helluva lot more you can do with wheat than just making bread. Remember, no grocery store, no resupply on the horizon, your on your own- that's what we are talking about here.
As far as the growing part of the question, it's unlikely they are growing JUST wheat and certainly a single crop and relaying on that wouldn't be a good plan.
The argument of limited space/land "most people don't even have 1 acre" begs the reasoning WHY you should store more food.
Ok-Half6395@reddit
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I don't disagree with storing food, as long as it's kept "in rotation" and is eaten on a regular basis. I completely agree with storing food and essentials, I think it's the responsible thing to do so that in a crises, people aren't relying so heavily on food/transport systems. I don't however agree with hoarding thousands of pounds worth of food that never actually gets eaten.
OP mentioned land for homesteaders... all I'm suggesting is that land would likely be better used on a more diverse range of food. OP even states that wheat is a space hog.
When did I say just bread? See my comment below. You can make porridge with wheat and with OPs 1200lbs per year that's 6 bowls per person every day. Yes they could make bread and other things too but it's still wheat, a lot of wheat, which doesn't make for a diverse diet.
By 'single' crop, I meant in terms of land... if an acre is used to grow wheat, that is a single crop on that land. Think food forests compared to mono cultures. To me, it makes more sense to grow different crops on that land which is both nutritionally beneficial and would help avoid the dangers caused by such a staple as wheat not having a good year.
Yes, most homesteaders don't have a lot of land which is why they should make the most of it. Again, I'm not saying people should not store food, they definitely should, just sensibly and they should use their land sensibly too.
WG--TX@reddit
I'm along with you on this sort of. I checked out OPs breakdown of what a person consumes of flour in a month, and I'm well below half of what he listed. If people are eating that much flour in a month, I sure hope it isn't the empty white bleached flour that it most likely is for 99% of people. That's the kicker with this post, is raw wheat berries are the best and most nutritionally packed version of grain to make flour out of. And if you're doing that, then you're actually helping yourself nutritionally.
With that said, I do that, and still don't eat a ton of it. So I think you're on with having less than this being okay. At least just based off of my own life. I'd also raise that beans take up about the same amount of space/weight and those would be better nutritionally in situations needing high calories and quality protein.
Ok-Half6395@reddit
Totally agree, beans and different pulses like lentils would be great, especially as you can grow them vertically too which would be a great way to make the most of your land. I had a massive glut of climbing beans this year and also grow cucumbers, kiwis, grapes and passion fruits vertically up my fences.
I completely agree, white bread doesn't make sense. Wholemeal bread creates less waste as well as being more nutritious. I would imagine wheat berry porridge (not sure what you'd call this in the US... wheatmeal?) would be the most nutritious and frugal as you're using more of the wheat berry. With OP's 1200lbs per year that would be around 6 bowls per day per person!
kkinnison@reddit
even back in pre-modern times going back to the dawn of history wheat was one the most labor intensive crop, but brought the most rewards for harvesting.
but cannot live on just wheat alone. Might even need to trade your crop for other needs.
Ridge_on_the_Ranch@reddit
I put them mylar bags with oxygen absorbers!
DabblrDubs@reddit
I think it’s very easy to underestimate food needs for any extended period of time. Thanks for this reminder
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Yes. It's like Salt. You mention "50 lbs. per person per year" and the "ruhruhruhruh" starts up. Usually by people that have never preserved food and just think "I only fill my salt shaker once every couple months." But the reality is the processed foods you are likely eating now HAS salt already in it heavily and once you transition to whole grains/legumes you WILL crave that salt.
Also, that is often a crying point for folks that do not do a lot of physical labor now and ASSume that SHTF will involve them "sitting around playing yahtzee to pass the time." Who have never lived this way and therefore don't realize how much WORK, i.e, physical labor goes into homesteading.
Also, no one has a salt tree growing in their yard... :)
JRHLowdown3@reddit
300 lbs. per person per year was always a good estimate range.
EverVigilant1@reddit
300 pounds/year of just wheatberries?
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Yes. You can substitute other grains for some of this also. We usually went with about 200 lbs. rice per person per year, 300 lbs. hard red winter wheat, 100 lbs. lentils, 50 lbs. salt, 50 lbs. sugar. This forms the basic grains 1 year. Kind of an anti starvation diet. Round out from there with various #10 cans of dehydrated fruits and veg, 2 weeks to a month of MREs or other ready to eat food, plus some FD meats. Cooking oil, good multivitamin.
whoooooknows@reddit
Hi! Where do you like to buy these supplies in these quantities? I know the LDS church has pre-canned wheatberries, but I get the sense that this is not what people are doing, for example.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Those deals are very inexpensive and a good way to go. No problem with storing whole wheat in #10 cans versus buckets.
Another option to avoid some shipping costs is seeing if you can find wheat locally and packing it yourself. This may include wheat marketed as "seed" wheat or even "feed" wheat. Had some friends about 15 years ago that were too cheap to buy standard triple cleaned storage wheat who went this route. Basically it's the same thing just often time cleaned once or twice instead of triple cleaned. What that means to the consumers is that the bags will have more chaff and dust from processing in the bags. This isn't a deal except to OCD/anal retentive types and of course you could just winnow it once more yourself via pouring from bucket to bucket slowly with a window fan going. OR blowing the chaff off before processing it. A lower cost/possibly local to you option. Since pesticide is rarely used in growing wheat (so I was told) this shouldn't be a concern.
NOT wanting to debate the whole use of "seed"/"feed" grains, just wanting to give a lower cost option. Back when I helped them do this (2009-2011'ish) 50 lbs. bags of seed wheat was less than $10. per bag IIRC.
EverVigilant1@reddit
OK, so 300 pounds/year of grains. I can see that.
ArcaneLuxian@reddit (OP)
If youre a single person, without the needs of other to worry about storing wheat berries for a year isnt as much a concern. But many of not most of us have families, and thats why I raise this, in my opinion, important point.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
500-600 lbs of various grains as the basis for a 1 year supply isn't over costly.
Going with 5 gallon mylars placed inside 55 gallon pickle drums (seal the mylars and immediately place in drum before they stiffen) can save a little on packaging costs versus buckets. We averaged 350 lbs. or more in each drum, which would have been roughly 9 five gallon buckets. The drums are NOT mobile friendly however...
ArcaneLuxian@reddit (OP)
Cost is not an element I mentioned, because frankly wheat is not an expensive prep. Not compared so much to other needs. But space is not something we all have, I live in a pretty average home, and I definitely dont have room to store forty 5 gal buckets inside. The drums are more conducive to storing more but thats still a lot of space being taken up by one product. And that is the main concern
JRHLowdown3@reddit
I get it.
However truth be told, real world experience with long term storage proves that "climate controlled" environments are NOT 100% necessary for long term storage. 99% of our food storage over the last 40 years was never in "climate controlled" conditions but rather in garages in Florida and connex containers in S. GA. It's nothing to have 2-3 months averaging 100 degree heat daily and also have freezing temps in winter. Even the LTS food that new "preppers" think are the most temperature sensitive (like MREs) have done really well under harsh LTS conditions.
In other words, having buckets/barrels, etc. in a garage, outside storage shed, etc. isn't the end of the world. And honestly I would rather have a real quantity of LTS food versus "only" being able to keep say 2 weeks of food because of being OCD/anal retentive and thinking that every bit of LTS has to be climate controlled. As with most new "prepper" things, the tendency is to overthink and under DO. "Plans", "lists" and "lists of lists" don't feed your family, and I'll take a few years of LTS food kept in less than ideal conditions over 2 weeks of perfectly climate controlled food any old day of the week.
EverVigilant1@reddit
Wow. That's a lot. I have some wheatberries and 3 people in my household. 900 pounds of wheatberries for a year is... a lot. I don't have anything like that much. I probably should rethink it.
This-Rutabaga6382@reddit
Out of curiosity , what is the estimated daily wheat usage for this amount (not the lb’s but like what are you making daily )
Also what is a reasonable amount of space to farm this much wheat ?
ArcaneLuxian@reddit (OP)
So I ran a scenario through a calculator for the average American flour needs:
Monthly cups flour ≈ 46.1538 cups.
Example counts (half of the above):
Bread: 4 loaves/month (12 cups flour → 3.252 lb berries)
Baked goods: 10 cups (→ 2.708 lb)
Pasta: 4.5 cups (→ 1.219 lb)
Flatbreads: 4.5 cups (→ 1.219 lb)
Breakfast: 3 cups (→ 0.812 lb)
Desserts: 4 cups (→ 1.083 lb)
Thickening: 2 cups (→ 0.541 lb)
Reserve buffer: 6.1538 cups (→ 1.6667 lb)
Sum berries ≈ 12.5 lb / month (as expected).
This is of course for a single person, with a moderate diet. It may be slightly off but this is just a single scenario.
A reasonable amount of space would be a half acre for about 1800 lbs of wheat. I've multiplied the initial amount by 1.5 due to the fact that no seed is 100% viable. You would also need to make sure you have enough seeds for the next years planting. So I'd do a whole acre, seeds to harvest for family use and seeds to harvest for saving.
Ok-Resolve-2258@reddit
Thank you for this
This-Rutabaga6382@reddit
thanks !!
OtherwiseAlbatross14@reddit
That's roughly a 20-24 oz loaf of bread per person per day, if my calculations are correct. This might vary somewhat based on recipe and obviously you wouldn't have to just make bread but that gives you an idea of how much bread you'd be eating
ExaminationDry8341@reddit
We tend to keep 7 or 8 barrels of various grains and soybeans on hand at all times. We use it as animal feed(chickens, cows, pigs) . I have spent years learning how to use them in ways that my family finds to be delicious. In a worst case scenario, if we stop feeding the animals there should be enough calories in those barrels for two years. We go through them fast enough that none of it sits around l9nger than 2 or 3 years. Our short term goal is to start growing our on wheat, rye, beans, and corn so we dont have to rely on outside sources for our animal feed.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
If your interesting in small scale grain growing, if you can find Gene Logsdon's book "Small Scale Grain raising"
This was a good reference book and a tremendous help.
Eredani@reddit
Several good YouTube videos on this topic. Wheat IS hard to grow and VERY hard to process without the right skills and equipment. Separating the wheat from the chaff is not easy. Milling the grain is not easy. Even turning the flour into decent bread can be difficult.
This process is something that maybe 1% of preppers can productivity engage in.
JRHLowdown3@reddit
Wheat is a grass and is not particularly hard to grow. We have some of the crappiest soil in some of our growing areas and we have grown a nice small stand (1/5 acre) of it several times without issue. It doesn't get as tall as the nice wheat you see growing in the midwest and other true farming areas, but it grows here.
We kept an eye on it as it browned, pulled a sprig here and there and watched for that "milk" cycle to stop and for the kernel to harden up. After that we hand cut it with a scythe making the little shocks like you see in old pics/drawings. Let them dry like that a while longer, then laid them out on a tarp, beat the shittake out of them. Removed the bigger stalks and stems to give to the rabbits and chickens. Fluffed the tarp up a dozen or so times (getting some of the chaff out), then poured the contents into a five gallon bucket. Then cheated a bit and poured slowly from one bucket to another in front of an electric fan.
Civilization would have died out 8000 years ago if we hadn't been able to process grains.
Everyone at the time told me "grain is cheap why bother?" But it was about #1. Making sure we could grow it. #2. Developing a seed stock that we knew would grow here and #3. Experience actually doing it (the key thing missed in 90% of people "survival plans"- actual experience doing what they say they plan to do.
A disc harrow to prepare the soil a bit would be helpful but not 100% necessary. While it was physical labor, it wasn't intense, children could have done the work.
hatsofftoeverything@reddit
The biggest thing with wheat if I understand correctly is it's decently easy to sow and harvest by hand, right? Compared to any tubers, or squash, or stuff like that, wheat you just kinda, throw it out there while walking around, and then get a sickle or scythe for harvest. Idk how feasible it'd be to harvest an acre or so but I can't imagine it's more than a day or two of decent work.
ettubrutusvp@reddit
That's very practical, especially for doubling seed saving, thanks for sharing. Have you looked into compact storage methods or crop rotation to maximize yeild on smaller plots?
ArcaneLuxian@reddit (OP)
Wheat is a cash crop, so we farm it exclusively with over 25k acres. We rotate and rest fields and have been doing so for decades. On my personal land I choose not to farm it since it is a land suck. We grow other crops in our garden instead.
Opcn@reddit
If you're eating that much I'm guessing you don't have a lot of cornmeal or rice in your diet.
The first step is really deciding if wheat grows well in your area. The reason beer is traditionally made with barley is that barley is easier to grow. Bread isn't made with barley because it doesn't taste nearly as good and it doesn't have the gluten content to really hold together.
I also suspect that a post collapse subsistence farmer in most areas in the US where wheat grows well should be able to intercrop summer and winter wheat. Modern varieties have a maturity time that's quick enough to grow both on the same plot unless you're way far in the north and hand harvest is a lot more flexible than machine harvest.
HamRadio_73@reddit
Thanks for the post
Knowledgepower24@reddit
Yeah I work an elevator full of 2 million bushels of grain. I’ll just help myself.
SaveSummer6041@reddit
I like the breakdown! I only rotate about 2 50 lb bags, and it seems to last a while. I couldn’t imagine my wife approving of 1200 lbs…
And yeah, I’ve accepted that I won’t be growing enough wheat to sustain my family. I do a bit of corn, but drought this past year hurt the water bill. Easier to leave the grains to the farmers…
SaveSummer6041@reddit
I like the breakdown! I only rotate about 2 50 lb bags, and it seems to last a while. I couldn’t imagine my wife approving of 1200 lbs…
And yeah, I’ve accepted that I won’t be growing enough wheat to sustain my family. I do a bit of corn, but drought this past year hurt the water bill