Sickles and Sheaves — Farming, Faith, and the Frye (Part 5)

This blog post is part of a series I (Richard) am writing about my past life experiences that helped develop a love and appreciation for agricultural heritage in general and landrace grains in particular. The series is called "Sickles and Sheaves - Farming, Faith, and the Frye" and you can view the other parts of this blog series here.

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Home, Church, School

Our mother was an avid reader and may have been among the few 1960s Book-of-the-Month farm wives in the vicinity which provided us with early access Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, Catherine the Great’s Memoirs, and other beautifully illustrated and bound volumes. Thanks to Mr. Yenny, our formidable school principal and eighth grade teacher, more thorough study of Grandpa’s poets came our way with agrarian relevance. We read every word of Longfellow’s Evangeline aloud in class, and my hexametric memories of “Acadie” remained evermore vivid not only because the heroine’s evocative if peculiar name was the same as my maternal grandmother’s middle name, but because the epic made recurrent reference to words familiar to our rural experience. In just the opening lines we met “goodly acres,” “harvest heat,” and “reapers at noontide.”   

Hans Franke (1935), Harvest Scene (detail)

Apart from a large mirror and family pictures on our living room walls, our home had little in terms of framed decor. But lack of popular country scenes by Millet or Brueghel did not limit the colorful and meaningful existence of a threatened agrarian lifeway. We were immersed in it. The “Northwest Drylands” popularized on calendars and canvas a generation later by photographer John Clement surrounded us in every direction. I enjoyed periodic visits to the home of an elderly relative and storyteller, Clara Schmick Litzenberger, not only to listen to tales passed down about Old Country living but also because of her wide-ranging interests in music and art. The copy of a large harvest time painting hung in her living room that, except for the distant woodlands, could have been of fields surrounding nearby Steptoe Butte. The artist was an obscure German, Hans Franke, and I learned many years after Clara’s passing that he favored scenes in the very vicinity of our ancestral Hessen homeland. We did not know the place existed back then, but my boyhood interest in these topics must have evidenced some indication of kindred spirit. Upon her passing in 1979, I learned that Clara had willed the painting to me. 

Edwin Molander, Grain Sheaf Window Panel (1949), Trinity Lutheran Church, Endicott, Washington

Dad also kept a 1930s English translation of the German Ohio Lutheran Synod’s Gebets-Shatz, or Treasure of Prayers—probably a confirmation gift, with a “Harvest Festival Prayer” that reminded listeners of forces beyond mortal control known to farming folk: “O Give thanks to the Lord; for He is good; because His mercy and truth endure forever…. O, how we took we feared the destruction of the precious grain in the fields! O, how we took thought and troubled ourselves, lest the bread which God has yet given us… might be snatched away. Thou has given us the early and the later rain in due season, and has faithfully and annually protected our harvests.” Confirmands in my day were customarily presented a similar small volume containing a “For Fields and Crops” prayer: “…Teach me, dear Lord, to know that Thou dost supply, in due season, daily bread for us and all mankind. Give us the needed diligence and necessary skill in the sowing and gathering of our harvests. Protect our fields from hail, fire, and floods, and let the earth yield its increase. Make us a thankful people as we enjoy working amid growing things, and open our eyes to behold the beauty of Thy creation.” 

The Latest Crop in the Local Food Movement? Wheat

Kristan Lawson from modernfarmer.com published a remarkably important article last summer discussing how wheat is experiencing a renaissance with small farmers revolutionizing the local food movement by growing heirloom and landrace grains with unique terroir. The article so effectively conveys the message we at Palouse Heritage champion that we wanted to feature it here in our blog. The author quotes our dear grains scientist from Washington State University, Steve Lyon and even mentions two landrace grain varieties we are growing, Red Fife and Sonoran Gold! Here are the highlights. You can read the full article on modernfarmer.com here.

Ripe wheat on Camas Country Mill in Central Oregon, Courtesy Tom Hunton and modernfarmer.com

Until very recently, small farms have tended to avoid planting wheat because it's not very profitable per acre. Commercially, wheat is grown in such vast quantities that it's usually sold not by the pound but by the ton. For centuries, society has considered wheat a faceless "commodity" like iron ore or cotton, every sack anonymous and interchangeable.

But that’s all about to change. Wheat is experiencing a renaissance as chefs, food writers, and savvy consumers discover that each kernel holds a universe of long-forgotten flavors, a terroir: Wheat from one area tastes different from the wheat in another, and each varietal has a different flavor profile from the one down the road.

And when wheat is no longer treated as a high-volume/low-price commodity, small farmers can start commanding top dollar for unique grain grown in a unique way on their unique land.

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But is it really possible to tell the difference between heirloom wheat hand-tended in small plots and nameless factory wheat? When you come right down to it, it’s all just … wheat, a flavor that’s always in the background, never the star. In fact, in blind taste tests, even top wine experts can’t tell different wines apart. Aren’t wheat terroirs just as indistinguishable?

No, says Dr. Stephen Jones at the Washington State University Bread Lab. As a leading expert in wheat genetics, he’s proven that different wheat strains and growing conditions do produce unique flavor profiles. “We do taste tests all the time in our lab with bakers, chefs, students, and even random visitors. People notice big differences in wheat flavor based on where it’s grown—especially when it’s fresh-milled 100-percent whole wheat. That’s where the flavors are.”

Although wine connoisseurs have developed an entire vocabulary to describe the subtle aromas hidden in a glass of Zinfandel or Chardonnay, the specialty wheat dialect is still in its infancy. “Sadly, we don’t yet have terms for all the different flavors in wheat,” says Klein. “But we’re working on it.” Taste-testers at the Bread Lab have volunteered such expressions as “nutty,” “earthy,” “bright,” “chewy,” “warm,” and “gratifying.” It’s a start.

Modern American farmers did not invent the notion that specific varietals of wheat from various geographic regions have different flavors; you can trace the concept back to Italy centuries ago, where each Italian region championed the quality, texture, and taste of their own wheat pasta over all others. The recent rise of major nationally distributed pasta brands eroded the regionalism, but now Italian pasta terroir is making a comeback, too. Companies like Rustichella d’Abruzzo have begun to release pastas made exactly as they were in the 19th century, such as their “PrimoGrano” line which exclusively uses hyper-localized ancient wheat strains only discovered in the hills of the Abruzzo region; a handful of acres are harvested and processed using traditional methods to make a single batch of pasta once per year, released to connoisseurs like the rarest of wines.

Just as there is no “best” type of grape, there is no single all-purpose heritage wheat “better” than the others. Small farmers are re-discovering that ancient wheat strains, known as “landraces,” each excel in different culinary contexts: Red Fife, originally from prehistoric Anatolia but perfected in Canada, is unbeatable for bread flour, for example; Sonora Wheat, the first wheat brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors, makes the perfect tortilla; Mesopotamian Durum, the grand-daddy of them all, dating back 9,000 years, is the basis for impeccable pasta.

When applied to wheat, the term “landrace” refers to any ancient variety cultivated so far in the past and for so long that it evolved to thrive in a specific ecosystem; nowadays these primitive types are cherished as the source of wheat’s genetic diversity, which is otherwise being lost as modern high-yield strains dominate all others. The very word “landrace” is appropriate here as well, since “land-” in this context means both “regional area” and “the ground” (while in botany “-race” means “distinctive sub-variety”), so “landrace” is the native English word closest in meaning to the French terroir.

For American farmers, the difficult part about marketing these heirloom strains is convincing consumers to give wheat a second look. You can only charge a premium for specialty wheat if customers are willing to pay. Paul Muller, co-owner of Full Belly Farm in Guinda, California—who grows the heirloom Iraqi Durum used by Community Grains to make its fettuccine—is excited about the wheat renaissance.

“I’ve grown up around wheat all my life,” Muller says, “and until recently no one has really talked about flavor. But now food writers and chefs are saying, ‘Hey, we love this wheat.’ People are finally paying attention to it. We as wheat farmers are now growing a food, not a commodity.”

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Klein is convinced that the flavors of these heirloom and landrace wheat varieties are only as good as the soil in which they’re sown. “Wheat like ours from small farms tastes superior because it’s grown in very good nutrient-rich soil,” he says. “Most generic wheat, conversely, comes from nutrient-depleted soil, because in the United States we usually grow wheat where the land is cheap, which is not great nutrient-wise. The better farmland is normally reserved for more profitable crops. But wheat from good soil gives a more ‘animated’ flavor, especially in fresh-baked bread.”

WSU’s Jones agrees that wheat grown in more desirable areas produces a vastly superior grain: “With grapes, the big flavors come from intentionally stressing the vines, but with wheat we have discovered it’s the opposite—the big flavors do not come from stress but from cool and moist conditions.”

Tom Hunton of Camas Country Mill in central Oregon is spearheading the wheat terroir movement in the Pacific Northwest, not only growing specialty wheats such as Edison Hard White (described as “buttery” and “golden”) but also inviting a growing community of local grain farmers to share his new state-of-the-art stone grist mill; without this access, they’d have to sell their high-end wheat at much lower prices on the commodity market, where its terroir would be lost.

From this small cooperative beginning, Hunton has big dreams: “We desire to bring taste and flavor to as large a population as possible, at an affordable price point,” he says.“We want to move beyond food for the elite and share these phenomenal flavorful varietals with a broader audience.”

A Weekend Trip to the George Washington Inn and other Pacific Northwest Agricultural Heritage Sites

President Washington entertaining his guests. Wife Lois is on the left.

My wife and I recently returned from a remarkably enjoyable weekend trip visiting some amazing sites related to agricultural heritage right here in the Pacific Northwest. We began at the George Washington Inn, Dan and Janet Abbott's five-star B & B located on the ocean between Sequim and Port Angeles. The Inn is a full scale replica of Washington's Mt. Vernon and Dan is passionate about America's colonial heritage in every way, including farming techniques for the living history farm he is developing. The last week of July the Pacific Northwest Colonial Festival will be held on the scenic grounds of the George Washington Inn. We had the special privilege of meeting President Washington himself (acclaimed reenactor Vern Frykholm) at breakfast and served him some Palouse Heritage Colonial pancakes made with our own landrace grain flour, which he pronounced as, "Just like Martha makes!" 

The George Washington Inn, located between Port Angeles and Sequim

Richardsons' Oat Pancakes

Fry's Bakery

Following a delightful time with Dan and President Washington, we continued on across the water via the Blackball Ferry to Victoria, British Columbia, where we were treated to a wonderful tour of the vicinity's agricultural heritage by Foster and Natasha Richardson who farm near Mill Creek, British Columbia. We dined on the most scrumptious oak pancakes--more like a cake actually, at Victoria's Nourish Kitchen & Cafe, and also toured Fry's Bakery, operated by friends of the Richardsons. Our principal destination was Hatley Park Castle, located about ten miles west of Victoria, which is the home of BC's Royal Roads University and three-time host of Queen Elizabeth on her trips to British Columbia. Royal Roads occupies the former grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company's Colwood Farm. Some of the province's earliest grain was raised at Colwood and adjacent Craigflower Farm, and evidence of these places' agrarian heritage can still be seen in Craigflower's manor house and the Colwood Farm stone dairy building. 

Our trip was another reminder of the rich agricultural heritage we have here in the northwest, and further inspires us to continue restoring those healthy and earth-friendly landrace grains from our past. People like George Washington and fur trade farmers thrived on them, and so should we!

Hatley Park Castle

Sickles and Sheaves — Farming, Faith, and the Frye (Part 4)

This blog post is part of a series I (Richard) am writing about my past life experiences that helped develop a love and appreciation for agricultural heritage in general and landrace grains in particular. The series is called "Sickles and Sheaves - Farming, Faith, and the Frye" and you can view the other parts of this blog series here.

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As I explored more fully our elders’ stories of harvests past and present, it also dawned on me that my grandfather’s treasured “Lautenschlager and Poffenroth” photograph (see Part 2 of this "Sickles and Sheaves" blog series) had been taken at the John Poffenroth farm near our home place north of Endicott. Grandpa was there because his older sister, our short, in dominatable Aunt Mae Poffenroth Geier, had married John. Beloved and sometimes feared Aunt Mae was a no-nonsense paragon of self-reliance. She forever cooked on a woodstove in her small Endicott home, sang and played the familiar Volga German hymn Gott ist die Liebe (God is Love) on an oak pipe-organ in her small living room. Had she decided in her seventies to butcher a hog or drive a tractor we would have gotten out of her way. She and John had raised their family just over the hill from where the 1911 harvest picture had been taken, and in a 1963 memoir she provided valuable insight regarding women’s essential and substantial roles at harvest time, even during pregnancy:

“We raised big gardens. An early garden was close to the house and late garden with potatoes, watermelon, and cucumbers out in the field away from the house. Sometimes I got up early while my children were still asleep to hoe the potatoes. It was quiet and peaceful with the fresh dew on the wheat fields and garden smell. Nothing I liked better with only the sun coming up over the hills and blue sky. ...When my twins were born we were harvesting our winter wheat. I was cooking for ten men and just before they were born the men went out to another place to harvest. Between then and when they came back to cut our spring wheat I had my twins and was back on the job cooking again and had to help to do the chores and heavy work.”

“…For at least three summers I also cooked in harvest in the cookhouse for Conrad Hergert’s crew. From ten to fifteen men were on hand. I baked bread for all the men every other day and cooked on a big old wood stove. One morning I counted the baked things and besides six loaves of bread, I baked twenty-four biscuits, twenty-four cupcakes, and three pies. If you ever wanted to smell something good it was coffee made in a big coffee pot on the stove. I got up at 3:30 in the morning to light the stove to have it hot by 4:00 a.m. to fry bacon and eggs, sometimes pancakes on Sunday morning.”

R. R. Hutchison, Busch Threshing Bee (Edgar Bergen & Chris Busch both in bottom photo), 1953; R. R. Hutchsion Studio Photograph Collection; Manuscripts, Archives & Special Collections; Holland/Terrell Libraries, Washington State University, Pullman

Among our area’s most colorful and continuous vintage harvest experiences were the September threshing bees first organized by Chris Busch at his farm near Colton, Washington, in 1947. Busch had known steam-powered threshing from his Palouse Country youth and as the massive old machines and harvest wagons became obsolete he began a collection that numbered over thirty in various stages of operation in the 1940s. Word spread throughout the region about the remarkable assemblage and with help from a dedicated network of other enthusiasts including neighbor Bill Druffel and C. R. Miller, retired WSC professor of agricultural engineering. Busch organized the Western Steam Fiends Club in 1951 with members eventually drawn from six states and three Canadian provinces. The event kicked off with a grand banquet sponsored by local church and school volunteers followed by a parade led by Busch’s favorite 1912 Minneapolis engine, 1917 McCormick reaper-binder, and Case separator. A spectacle of old-time harvest festivities followed that drew as many 4,500 onlookers, and the tradition is carried on today at the annual Palouse Empire Threshing Bee held on Labor Day weekend at the county fairgrounds near Colfax, WA. 

The World's Best Rye Bread

Here's another great bread recipe from friends who love baking with Palouse Heritage landrace grain flours. This rye bread brings a deliciously enticing flavor that all fans of rye bread will love and appreciate. The recipe features Palouse Heritage Rosen Rye and Crimson Turkey. Enjoy!

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World's Best Rye Bread

• 1 7/8 cups water

• 3 cups Palouse Heritage Crimson Turkey flour*

• 2 cups Palouse Heritage Rosen Rye flour

• 4 Tbsp sugar

• 1 Tbsp dark brown sugar

• 2 Tbsp dry milk

• 2 tsp salt

• 3 Tbsp vital wheat gluten

• 2 Tbsp butter

• 2 tsp active dry yeast

• 2 oz unsalted sunflower seeds

The loaf in these photos was made using the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Breadmaker.

*Our flours are currently only available for wholesale buyers. If you are a wholesale buyer interested in using our flour, please contact us.

Ancient Grains & Harvests (Part 2)

This blog post is part of a series that I (Richard) am writing about grain and agricultural themes in classic art. The research I am sharing here will contribute to a new book that will soon be published under the title Hallowed Harvests. You can read other posts in this series here.

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“A King’s Estate” and the Eleusian Fields

Anthropologist Clark Wissler observes that distribution of bread in ancient Egypt was the principal reason civil administration first developed, and that association of life-giving bread with spirituality has been a central tenet of western religions. Homer’s eighth century BC description of a summer harvest in the Iliad (Book 18) is remarkable not only for being the first known reference to grain harvesting in Western literature, but for aptly describing with spectacular imagery the method commonly used for cutting grain that continued well into the modern era. The account describes the magnificent shield forged by Hephaestus for Achilles that featured a microcosm of the Greek year including a recitation of cooperative summertime harvest labors.

Elsewhere in Homer’s epic the imagery of sickle, reap, and harvest is used for the familiar martial metaphor in ancient literature for weaponry, battle and death. The context of the episode is the Trojan attack led by noble Hector on Odysseus’ invading Greeks. A great shield is again featured, this time belonging to Hector, which blazed out “like the Dog Star through the clouds, all withering fire” in another allusion to harvest. The appearance of Sirius in the summer sky appeared at harvest time in the Mediterranean so was laden with great mythic significance given the prospect of abundance or disaster depending on such elemental conditions as pestilence and weather during the critically intense few weeks of harvest.

Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, Eleusian Fields on the Rharian Plain (Lithograph on paper, 9 ½ x 13 ⅗ inches), La Grèce: Vues pittoresques et topographiques (Paris, 1834)

In Greek mythology, Demeter (literally “Grain Mother,” Roman “Ceres”) related to humanity the means to domesticate cereal crops in the Eleusian Fields on ancient Attica’s Rharian Plain near Athens, legendary home of humanity’s first harvest. Demeter’s origin is mysterious as this maternal archetype was not native to the Greece mainland, but had been adopted into the Olympian pantheon with her etiological myth explaining seasonal change. Like her nourishing grains, Demeter had come from the eastern Mediterranean to share life-giving blessings at the dawn of classical civilization. She was kindred spirit to Phoenician Cybele and Egypt’s Isis—inspiration for Walt Whitman’s celebrated 1856 “Poem of Wonder at the Resurrection of Wheat.”

“Great Eleusinian Stele” of Demeter, Triptolemus, and Persephone (c. 440 BC). From the original Pentalic marble, 86 x 59 inches. Discovered at Eleusis in 1859, now at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens Otto Seemann, Grekernas och romanes mytologi (1881).

Demeter spurned wine at Eleusis for sacred kykeôn, the divine “mixture” of infused grain and herbs that strengthened the Iliad’s adventurers and refreshed Eleusian pilgrims at autumnal rites practiced in Athens and elsewhere from at least 800 BC to 300 AD. The ancient myths had both spiritual and terrestrial dimensions that tempered humanity’s martial tendencies. “History celebrates the battlefield wherein we meet our death,” French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre observed (1918), “but it scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive.” American Romantic poet William Cullen Bryant expressed the theme of deliverance through divine sacrifice in “Song of the Sower” (1864).

Sacred virtues of self-sacrifice bring renewal and sustain the spirit; and the practical science of tillage, seeding, and harvest sustains the body and demands the discipline of timely labor. Democratic Athens was heavily populated and reliant on trade in grain to provision its populace. Aristotle, Demosthenes, and other ancient sources contain considerable reference to state supervision of wheat and barley prices, the special status of Athenian magistrates responsible for the grain supply (sitophulakes), and recurrent priority of such matters on the Assembly’s agenda. Visual depictions of grain harvests and other farming endeavors on sculpture, vases, or other forms, however, are paradoxically rare which suggests that those who could afford such luxuries had greater decorative interest in heroic myth than in idealized or realistic country scenes.  

The Purple Egyptian Barley Project

Beer and bread. Two staples of history's menu. It is said that agriculture was founded just for the making of these two nutritious vittles. Every corner of the planet had their own ways of doing things, their own flavor profiles. From technique to weather to soil composition, everything that distinguished a given region or artisan from another imparted specific flavor profiles. That is the art and science and terroir. Think of it as "territorial flavors."

Here at Palouse Heritage, we specialize in raising landrace grains (landrace grains being original natural varieties that have been planted and cultivated in such a way that they have naturally and fully adapted to local geography). Enter Purple Egyptian Barley. This is an ancient grain used extensively in the greater Egyptian area thousands of years ago. It was brought to the Inland Northwest and it has since fully adapted to life here, expressing Northwest terroir as a true landrace grain. Palouse Pint, Spokane's only malting facility, has malted a portion of this incredible grain.

From left to right:  the baker (Shaun of Culture Breads), the malter (Joel of Palouse Pint), and the farmer (our own Don Scheuerman)

As a joint effort between Palouse Heritage, maltster Joel of Palouse Pint, Shaun of Culture Breads, and Tom of Bellwether Brewery, together we bring you Spokane's introduction to this NW landrace Purple Egyptian Barley.

The brewer (Tom of Bellwether Brewery)

Every Thursday beginning February 23 through the first week of April, we will bring you a new small batch of a Purple Egyptian variety Bellwether beer and Culture Breads bread. If you come every week there are prizes in store, including a commemorative pint glass and the chance to vote for your favorite beer of the series. The winning beer will be brewed at full capacity and released during Craft Beer Week in May.

Break bread and raise a glass with us each Thursday for the next 7 weeks. Location is Bellwether Brewery at 2019 N Monroe St, Spokane, WA.

Meet the farmer (our own Don Scheuerman), the maltster, the brewer, and the baker. Learn why landrace grains are so important to local economy and how it brings the best terroir to your plate and pint. Hope you can make it. 

Cheers!