New Research Uncovers Immense Value from Old Wheat Varieties

A treasure trove of century-old wheat varieties holds the promise of restoring long-lost traits that modern agriculture has nearly forgotten. A recent article from Science.org highlights the exciting potential these heirloom grains possess, offering new pathways for breeders seeking to enhance resilience and nutritional value in contemporary wheat. This discovery is not just a nod to our agricultural past but a beacon for future sustainability.

In the early 20th century, wheat varieties were incredibly diverse, each adapted to specific regional conditions. Over the years, however, the drive for higher yields led to a narrowing of this genetic pool, often sacrificing traits like disease resistance and nutritional content. The Science.org article delves into how researchers are now turning back the clock, mining these ancient grains for the genetic diversity needed to combat modern agricultural challenges.

At Palouse Heritage, we celebrate this resurgence of interest in heritage grains, which aligns perfectly with our mission to preserve and promote these ancient varieties. Our own work with landrace grains reflects the rich agricultural legacy of the Palouse region, where traditional farming methods and heirloom seeds come together to produce crops that are both flavorful and resilient. The insights from the Science.org article underscore the importance of these efforts, highlighting how historical knowledge and modern science can synergize to benefit both farmers and consumers.

As we continue our journey at Palouse Heritage, we remain committed to honoring the wisdom of the past and resurrecting the amazing heritage grains that have helped sustained humanity for ages. The rediscovery of these century-old wheat varieties is a testament to the enduring value of agricultural biodiversity.

Heritage Grains Play an Essential Role in National and Global Security

Title page of Karl’s paper in Joint Force Quarterly

Here at Palouse Heritage, we are serious about our commitment to revive and establish heritage/landrace grains in our local food systems. Among the many important reasons we are committed to this cause is the critical role heritage grains play in national and global security. One of our team and family members, Karl Scheuerman, recently wrote a paper related to this topic. The paper ended up winning first place in the annual Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition. As a result, it was just published in the latest issue of Joint Force Quarterly by National Defense University Press, a premier global security and military studies journal. The digital version will be out soon, but in the meantime, the PDF version is available here. (Karl’s essay begins on pg 34 of that PDF.)

To summarize, the paper dives into overlooked aspects of our food system vulnerabilities here in the U.S. within the context of global strategic competition. For your convenience, here is the introduction:

In the history of warfare, belligerents have often targeted food supplies to force opponents into submission. However, in America’s wars over the last century, threats to domestic food security were minimal. In many ways, the U.S. enjoyed insulation from combat conditions overseas that could have otherwise disrupted the country’s ability to feed itself. Complacency in relative isolation from disruptive food shocks is no longer a luxury the U.S. can afford. We are now in an era of increased globalization, where food supply chains span the oceans. In addition, America faces the renewed rise of strategic competition as China and Russia seek to replace U.S. power across the globe. Given these new realities, timely evaluation of potential vulnerabilities to American food production is necessary.

Among rising strategic competitors, Russia has explicitly demonstrated a clear willingness to target food systems. In their current war against Ukraine, the Russian military has relentlessly attacked wheat supplies and production. Yet despite the critical importance wheat plays as the foremost American dietary staple, its production is indeed vulnerable to disruption should Russia choose to do so. While a full-scale conventional war with Russia is unlikely due to nuclear deterrence, the Kremlin has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to disrupt foreign interests over the last several years, from election interference to trade wars. Targeting the U.S. wheat industry could become another preferred option for the Kremlin to wage adversarial competition at a level below the threshold of armed conflict. Given the emerging global security environment, the U.S. government should re-evaluate current policies to ensure the resilience of the wheat industry against this threat.

Included in the paper’s conclusions and recommendations is the following:

Landraces can and have been preserved in seed banks, which is worthwhile, but there are limitations in preserving them this way. Landraces are heterogeneous, meaning that individual specimens of the plant’s spikes stored in banks do not necessarily possess all the genetic diversity in the landrace variety. In addition, most biologists agree that active cultivation of landraces is essential to preserve cultivation knowledge. Given these circumstances, the USDA should find ways to collaborate with American farmers and researchers to incentivize and ensure sufficient production levels of landrace wheats.

We hope that our efforts here at Palouse Heritage will help build and restore much needed resilience in our local food systems to mitigate the threats mentioned in the essay. Thanks so much for your support as we strive to do so!

Richard's Interview for the Off-Farm Income Podcast

Our own Richard was interviewed recently for the "Off-Farm Income" podcast. It's a great discussion about our journey into raising landrace grains as well as old world farming practices, Volga German farming heritage, and Richard's highs and lows in high school FFA!

You'll definitely want to check it out:
http://www.offincome.com/ofi-606-if-you-like-bread-thank-a-german-dr-richard-scheuerman-franklin-county-historical-society/

P.S. Richard isn't exactly "technically inclined" as some may say. So when he shares our website at the end of the interview, he incorrectly states it as palouse colony dot com. He meant to say palouseheritage.com. Safe to say he truly is more comfortable involving himself with the "old days."

Northwest Colonial Festival — Heritage Grains under the Big Top

The Northwest’s Olympic Peninsula is famous for hosting continental America’s only rain forest which averages about 150 inches of annual precipitation. That fact might make ocean-side grain culture there a hopeless prospect, but far from it on the dry and sunny north side of the Olympic Mountains. To the contrary, the imposing mountains shelter the vicinity of Sequim, Washington, from the region’s prevailing southwesterly winds to create a rain shadow effect causing only about fifteen inches of rain to fall in that area. The peculiar semi-arid climate combined with fertile landscape create ideal conditions for raising wheat, barley, and oats. Match the geography with the patriotic dream of Dan and Jan Abbot to build a full-scale replica of Mt. Vernon as a five star bed and breakfast and you get… the spectacular George Washington Inn.

Barley Field near Sequim on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula (2018)

The Abbots have been friends of Palouse Heritage since we first met several years ago at one of the WSU Grain Gathering conferences. Dan shares our interest in health and history and wanted to learn about the crops of America’s Colonial Era in order to provide a “living history” experience to visitors to the Inn. He might not have expected them to harvest the crop, but thought that establishing test plots with actual varieties that once grew at places like Mt. Vernon and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello would be a fascinating project. And so was launched a partnership between Dan, the WSU Bread Lab in nearby Burlington, and Palouse Heritage.

British Army Reenactors approach the George Washington Inn (Mt. Vernon)

The third annual Northwest Colonial Festival was held at the Inn this past August with hundreds of visitors attending a series of special events and reenactor encampments of British regulars and American patriots. Along with demonstrations of tool making, cooking, printing, weaving, and other traditional crafts, the August sunshine brought the landrace grain plots to maturity. Many of the guests gathered under an enormous tent where longtime WSU senior agronomist Steve Lyon and I teamed up to tell about the various varieties and discuss the challenges and benefits of heritage grain production. Several once prominent early American grains like Virginia White and Red May also made their way to the Pacific Northwest by the late 1800s, and seeing bountiful stands again wave in the seaside breeze presents scenes worthy of a painting.

Three (Colonial) Musketeers

Early American Mediterranean Red Wheat Test Plot

One of the winter wheats planted last fall, Mediterranean Red, yielded terrifically and represents a remarkable chapter in the history of American agriculture. Most folks are familiar with the story of Hessian troops from Germany being used as mercenaries to fight for the British during the Revolutionary War. Many agricultural historians believe that these soldiers brought more with them to the Colonies that love of schnapps and sauerkraut. It seems that a tiny pernicious pest that came to be known as the Hessian fly likely arrived with the hay and grain brought over to provision the soldiers livestock. This insect wrought enormous havoc on cereal grains that had long been raised in North America, and local news and correspondence of George Washington and other farmers from the era is full of news about the calamity that ensured which threatened the food supply. Fortunately for the new nation, enterprising “farmer improvers” introduced Mediterranean Red which seemed to have a natural resistance to infestation. Scientists today study the remarkable genetic diversity of landrace grains that developed in locales throughout the world for millennia and continue to exhibit valued traits for hardiness, yield, and flavor.

Bridget Baker, Olympic Gold (oil on canvas, wheat field near Sequim), Palouse Heritage Collection

Hands to Harvest! “Bringing in the Sheaves” in 2018

Few words conjure up richer connotations of summertime, country life, and abundance than harvest. During the past three weeks we have commenced harvesting our Palouse Heritage grains and are pleased to report excellent quality and yield. Ever being interested in matters of origin, I decided to investigate the derivation of the word “harvest,” and learned that it is derived from German Herbst (autumn). That word in turn descends from a root shared by Latin carp- (“to gather”) and Greek karpos (“fruit”). “Harvest” in the sense of reaping grain and other crops came into vernacular use during the medieval era of Middle English.

Palouse Heritage Yellow Breton Wheat Harvest near Connell, Washington (July, 2018)

Likely due to the light color of a wheat kernel’s interior endosperm, the word “wheat” in many European languages meant “white,” as with Old English whete, Welsh gwenith, and German weizzi. The Latin term “gladiators,” hordearii, literally means “barley eaters” since they subsisted on high energy foods like barley, oatmeal, and legumes. Roman legionaries were routinely outfitted with sickles in order to procure their livelihood throughout the far flung empire, and probably used them more often that their weapons. The helical frieze on Trajan’s Column in Rome (c. 110 AD) features a dynamic group scene of soldiers in full uniform harvesting waist-high grain with prodigious heads.

These days we don’t need to rely on sickles and legionnaires to bring in the crop. Good friends like Brad Bailie of Lenwood Farms near Connell, Washington, raise bountiful crops of organic Palouse Heritage varieties like Crimson Turkey and Yellow Breton. The latter is a soft red variety native to the northern France where for generations it was used for the prized flour essential for flavorful crepes. Farther to the northeast in the vicinity of Endicott, Washington, our longtime friends Joe DeLong and Chuck Jordan are harvestings stands of Palouse Heritage Red Fife, a famous bread grain originally from Eastern Europe, Sonoran Gold wheat, and Scots Bere barley that has become one of the most sought-after craft brewing malt grains.

Although there are some variations in climate and soil across the inland Pacific Northwest, this fertile region lies within the great arc of the Columbia River’s “Big Bend” easily identified on any map. While reading through some old newspapers recently I encountered the following poem titled “The Big Bend” by Louis Todd that was published in 1900. Little else is known about Todd’s life, but his literary expressions here make it clear he greatly appreciated this land of harvest time “golden splendor.”

No other river to the ocean

   Will a tale like thine unfold,

Of the wealth seen in thy travels;

   Of the wealth thy borders hold;

For thy thoughts the grandeur bear,

   And thy breath the sweetness breathes,

Of the boundless fields and forests,

   Of the richly laden trees.

And there grows within thy roaring

   All the fairest of the vine;

Luscious fruits in clusters hanging

   From the north and southern clime.

Great fields of wheat in golden splendor,

   Waving like a mighty sea,

Holding safe their precious treasure

   ’Till the grain shall ripened be.

Where nature works with freest hand,

   Builds her greatest work of art,

Will the feeble life of man

   There most smoothly play its part.

Oh, leave the dreary course you travel,

   Spurn the rocky path you go,

Join again your life with Nature,

   Where the fragrant flowers grow.

Palouse Heritage Red Fife Wheat Harvest (July, 2018)

Seasons Change and Crops Grow at Palouse Colony Farm

Palouse Colony Farm Native Lupine and Yellow Balsamroot

This week’s post is a photo montage of recent scenes from Palouse Colony Farm where we were treated to an moist spring that benefited both crops and the native flora of the area’s river bluffs and natural grasslands. Bursts of yellow “sunflower” balsamroot (Balsamorhiza careyana )abound on the southwestern facing slopes while purple lupine (Lupinus spp.), and other wildflowers favor the longer shadows of northern hillsides. The nutritious seeds and stalks of the sunflowers have long been gathered by the region’s native peoples, while lupine blossoms served as a traditional grave decoration.

While elk have been known to frequent the canyon some miles upstream, this is the first year in memory that a small herd of about fifteen of these grand creatures lingered in the vicinity of Palouse Colony Farm. By winter they had headed eastward probably to range in the higher elevations of northern Idaho but we hope they remember the way back to our vicinity. Our bend in the river, which is the northernmost point of the Palouse, has also been home this spring to two pairs of nesting bald eagles. The males periodically swoop high above us when walking around the farm as if to make sure we’re tending to the business of the farm and check out the river for any fish that might be moving close to the surface.

Guardians of the Farm

I always marvel at how well our landrace winter grain varieties mature in the spring after looking so scrawny in the fall. One wonders how Mother Nature equips the delicate leaves of the young plants to withstand the subzero temperatures that frequently descend throughout the region in December and January. Our father, who raised bountiful crops year after year on our family’s acreage just east of Palouse Colony Farm, observed that the first two weeks of February brought more frost damage to the crops than any other period during the winter. The pictures below show two of our grandchildren standing between stands of Crimson Turkey hard red bread wheat (at left) and soft red Yellow Breton, one of France’s famed crepe grains. The contrast between the sparsely filled furrows last November with the lush stand at the same place in June attests to the remarkable life-giving forces of land and air.

Before and After: Palouse Heritage Winter Landrace Plantings at Lenwood Farm near Connell, Washington (Left and Right: Crimson Turkey™ and Yellow Breton™ Wheats)

East Meets West—WSU’s 2018 Farmwalk Tour and Our Seattle Damsel & Hopper Friends

This past June we were privileged to take part in Washington State University Extension Service’s Farmwalk 2018 program organized by Nichole Witham and Aba Kiser of the Food & Farm Systems Program headquartered at scenic Port Hadlock on Puget Sound. Thirty-five guests showed up on a breezy morning at the end of Grove Road between Endicott and St. John to learn about the history of the farm and tour the property.

Founder Rob Salvino of Seattle’s Damsel & Hopper Bakeshop

We were pleased to make the acquaintance of folks from across the state who shared our interests in health and heritage through landrace grain production, processing, and marketing. Several passed on greetings from our good friend in Seattle, master artisan baker Rob Salvino of Damsel & Hopper Bakeshop (4405 Wallingford Avenue North). Rob was the first professional baker to use the landrace grain flours that we had grown and milled courtesy of Kevin Christiansen at Fairhaven Mill in Burlington. Rob established a thriving business in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood that features both a retail sales area and subscription delivery service for an array of delicious whole grain breads, scones, pastries, and crackers made from Palouse Heritage Sonoran Gold, White Lammas, and Crimson Turkey. His shortbread cookies are to die for!

I was surprised to learn that almost half the group had traveled from places west of the Cascades to find our place tucked away deep in the rolling hills of the Palouse Country. Several appreciated that our farm’s location even seemed beyond the pale of MapQuest though they did manage to join us in time thanks to the old reliable system of a green road sign that identified Grove Road. I remember Jack Grove very well as he lived at the Colony when I was a boy and was grandfather to our distant cousins who lived in other houses there. Mr. Grove related many tales to me of yesteryear life along the river, and some of these for a book to be published by WSU Press this fall titled From Hardship to Homeland. In a future post I’ll share some extracts from that work.

Palouse Colony Farm Manager Andrew Wolfe Speaking to Farmwalk Participants

Thanks to Nicole, Aba, and the WSU Farm & Food Systems team for bringing producers, processors, and vendors on both sides of our state closer together through the Farmwalk program. Aba also coordinates the very successful Cascadia Grains Conference which will be held next January 18-19 in Olympia. I hope you can make it.