Saturday, December 23, 2006

GRAIN FOR A YEAR!

We drove to a farming community to meet the truck and pick up our grain. There ended up being LOTS of great young men and women to help unload the truck. They were super. Here you see some of the unloading....
The younger ones were excited to see COWS...when we moved down here Zander had never seen a cow...he called all the cows he saw on the drive down "moose". ::snort::

All organized in the garage with co-op baskets neatly alongside....

6 comments:

Cynthia said...

Can't wait to see the pictures. I sure do miss our produce co-op.... and I think I mentioned this before. I never did get a single picture... can't believe that!

Debbie said...

That is a lot of grain! Wow. Glad the ligistics worked out for picking up the girls.

all in the family said...

Wow! A whole lotta Grain! How much do you have to order for the co-op? Is it cheaper than buying it through a store like www.wholegrainsandmore.com (close to me) or www.breadbeckers.com (1 hour from me, so I wouldn't have shipping charges). How long will that grain last you? 1 year?

I made my first Ezekiel bread last night. It was SOO good and sweet too!

TTYL
Beth

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Mike emailed us that he was "glad that we now had enough grain to sink a ship. He knew that was a concern."

To which I replied...."at least we'd be able to eat lots of healthy grains on the desserted island."

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Beth,

I can order as little as 5 lbs through our shop natural co-op.

This grain order was something new...and I'm excited about it.

I love WHEAT MONTANTA grains. These are the grains I bought while living in San Antonio and in Anchorage too. I haven't been able to find a supplier here. I can order online but hate to pay the shipping...when I figured it out though it would only be a few dollars more than ordering through our Shop Natural Co-op so I was considering it. On our vacation this summer we drove by Wheat MT and stopped to pick up a bucket of Praire Gold. This is my all time favorite wheat and I'm wishing now that instead of getting the red wheat too - I'd simply gotten more PG. It's a high protien wheat but is white and works wonderfully for breads etc.

To order wholesale prices we had to order 5,000 lbs and then there was a $5 pallet fee. The prices this way were MUCH cheaper than the website - I think it's assumed you will then sell it retail. Anyway - an example...50 lbs of Bronze Chief for $11 and through our Shop Natural co-op it is $18 for their hard red. The main thing for me is that I COULD get PG which I like much better than the grains we've been getting from SN. I've been trying to find a cheap way to do this since I moved here. LOL Bread Beckers is VERY expensive as is Urban Homemaker to ship grain here.....those buckets are heavy. ::snort::

I figured a grain a month is what I've been ordering. I bought a combination of 12 45/50# bag/pails. I bought pails because they are sealed and I think will be better for storage. Those pails are $11 to BUY so that's a nice perk as well. ::snort:: I can turn around and sell my pails if I want to recoop even more on my grain. I bought Bronze Chief (hard red), Prairie Gold (hard white), Soft white, rye and 7 grain (which I've been making on my own....)

Another nice perk is that ALL WM grains are "better than organic". They meet and exceed the organic standards. And they are WONDERFUL to bake with. LOL

Mike's theory is that we'll be getting orders to move shortly because everytime I begin to stock up on grains we get orders. LOL We just heard we were extended from a 3 year tour to a 4 year tour so I assumed it would be safe to do some of those "putting down root" things....guess we'll see if Mike's theory holds water. LOL

Anonymous said...

Mike's theory would be great if the move put you somewhere in our part of the world so we could drive to see you easily. :)

l/p