Best place to buy food for storage?

[lower_ark]

One more thing. Most bakeries that produce large volumes of bread daily will have bags of grain you can buy. I've bought grain from Stone Mill Bakery many times. Last I bought was 7 grain mix for $30/50lbs. Looking at the labeling on the bag, it came from Honeymill grains. They buy it by the pallet and will readily sell bags to the public. All you have to do is ask.

[MinnesotaSmith]

Originally Posted by naturallysweet

I'd like to add that I didn't write my last posting to put down people who live in the city, but more to point out that many would be clueless when it comes to buying anything in the country. Unless they drive past a farm stand or farmer's market, many couldn't find anything to eat. I wouldn't drop a 5-year-old off in the wilderness and expect them to survive anymore than I would take someone out of a big city and expect them to be able to find anything in the country.

I'd also like to add that I have done a fair amount of cold calling within my community, only to end with failure much of the time. A family owned farm will generally sell to anyone, and are often happy with that little extra cash that may or may not be reported to the IRS.

But the agribusinesses in my area are not very friendly to the small time purchaser. I've even had to deal with open hostility for daring to take someone's time up with what they figured was a wasted phone call. Or be told that they will only sell to me if I agree to buy $100,000 worth of product.

It should be possible to buy from a wholesaler. You'll of course need to pay in full in advance, as they won't know you.

It's not the cost of the actual product ($5K or less, last time I added it up), so much as it is the transportation (if coming from a distance) and what to do with it once the truck is there. I once calculated that it would take something like 67 55-gallon plastic drums to hold a 20,000 pound truckload of hard red winter wheat. Any larger containers, and moving it around ranges from nightmare to not going to happen. You're going to need a special place to process it, with everything needed there prior to grain delivery day, and I wouldn't store those drums just anywhere. Then, there's the need for other people to help you get it from the butt of the truck into drums, with bagging, cleaning, O2 removal/adding N2 or Argon/sealing/transporting, plus OPSEC concerns... All handleable, but not like having some construction material delivered.

[Forest Beekeeper]

Originally Posted by MinnesotaSmith

How exactly did you get that list? I would dearly love to obtain similiar information for a different state.

I googled 'new Jersey' 'wheat' 'dealer'; in the results I saw a link for last years farm subsidy recipients. I clicked on it and poof 300+ names and locations.

How clean grain is when it come from the combines is really a matter of the combine operator. He can tweak it to run a bit slower, to give you a cleaner result.

What we get may still have maybe one foreign object per '2-pound coffee can' worth of grain.

Whole grain needs to be threshed and winnowed. Which will remove 99.95% of all foreign objects anyway.

But you still want to dump one cup at a time onto a kitchen table and look through it, before you put it in your grinder.

To us, it is well worth the effort given the low price; and how long whole grain lasts.

[MinnesotaSmith]

And IMO the info in it should be stickied near the top of the board.

[Forest Beekeeper]

Originally Posted by lower_ark

Also, you don't really need a database to find a source. Simply drive around in the countryside during season, stop the car, get out and talk to the farmer.

I have done that before.

I have also had very good results from calling farm-wives and asking for their assistance. The farm-wife gossip network is usually up-to-date.

:)

[Summerthyme]

One thing that we've run into is that many crop farmers have contracted their crop out to someone, and legally CAN'T sell any of that to individuals. I'm sure they could "get away with it", but it's not worth the hassle to many of them.

Another issue is the fear of liability... someone claiming to get sick from that "uncleaned" wheat when they baked it into something, and true or not, the potential lawsuit would cost FAR more to defend (even if there is NO chance the litigant would win) than any profit they'd make from a few bushels of wheat or corn.

ALSO... last week we took delivery of a 14 ton load of straw. Hubby became deathly ill within 4 hours of unloading it, and chopping a few bales of it into the stalls for bedding. Apparent organophosphate poisoning. Granted, he is sensitive to those chemicals as the result of too many years of exposure when he was growing up, but if that wheat was sprayed close enough to harvest that the straw was saturated, the wheat itself must have been as well. We've bought a lot of oat and wheat straw from this farmer before and never ran into this problem before. I'm surely glad I don't have pails of wheat in my cellar with the same contamination!

Summerthyme

[Meemur]

Yikes, Summer! Is he better now?

[Homesteader]

I second the LDS cannery. I am taking a group next week and it is mostly non members.

Glad to see people waking up.

[Forest Beekeeper]

Originally Posted by Summerthyme

...
ALSO... last week we took delivery of a 14 ton load of straw. Hubby became deathly ill within 4 hours of unloading it, and chopping a few bales of it into the stalls for bedding. Apparent organophosphate poisoning. Granted, he is sensitive to those chemicals as the result of too many years of exposure when he was growing up, but if that wheat was sprayed close enough to harvest that the straw was saturated, the wheat itself must have been as well. We've bought a lot of oat and wheat straw from this farmer before and never ran into this problem before. I'm surely glad I don't have pails of wheat in my cellar with the same contamination!

Summerthyme

Wheat was sprayed with organophosphates and then sold, I think that is illegal.

[Summerthyme]

Yeah... thank God for preps, including antidotes for organophosphates.

I don't know about the legality... I know a poster at TB2k who is from the Kansas wheat country always cautions people to ask about the spray history before buying wheat from the field... I don't know if there is a spray schedule close to harvest for wheat meant for seed or what...

Summerthyme