Preserving Grain

Did you know it used to be more common for large milling corporations to preserve some of their grain? A few years ago the price of buckets rose and mass consumption of pre-packaged foods also rose. Home cooking/baking declined, so milling companies stopped seeing the benefit in preserving grain and resorted to selling the grain as a processed flour directly to large bakeries for mass produced, chemical laden baked goods that last for months or even years on the shelf.

Today it seems there is a huge push from health officials to encourage us to eat bugs to save the planet. However, officials aren't owning up to the real reasons behind what is making us sick, the greed in food/beverage industry. If officials were truly concerned with our health, they would be discouraging mass production and manipulation of our food supply and encouraging local raw goods such as raw milk, locally processed meat, and grain; instead there are more regulations being put in place to limit the sale of such goods.

We resist this montra that we should eat bugs and berries for the sake of the planet. Instead we spend our days preserving the harvest that God has supplied.

"While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease." - Genesis 8:22

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Have you ever wondered what a fortified granary was in the Bible?

"Let them gather [as a tax] all [of the fifth of] the food of these good years that are coming, and store up grain under the direction and authority of Pharaoh, and let them guard the food [in fortified granaries] in the cities." -Genesis 41:35

Fortified granaries likely involved building a stone, air-tight structure. The grain would be put into the structure and the air would be expelled by igniting a fire to eliminate oxygen before sealing the opening. Their grain would be protected from the elements and from animals, pests, and any pest eggs for as long as needed!

Nowadays, we protect grain by eliminating oxygen from containers. Eggs from the field cannot survive in the absence of air, and rodents typically do not bother gnawing through containers. When kept on a shelf, this preserved grain will last for many years!

At The Farmers Harvest we value real food as God intended and although it may be harder on us to do things this way, we see the real benefit at the end of the day. We call ourselves modern day Josephs. We spend a large amount of our time having a variety of grain shipped in for preservation. When there is a lean year we know our God will supply, yet we also know the Lord commanded His people to work as the ant works. That is why we work hard when there is plenty! Preserved grain means less chance of eggs hatching in your pantry, less chance of eggs hatching on the stones in your mill, and food for the lean years! Bonus is that you can leave it on the shelf for whenever you need it. It is the original longterm food storage!