What to do with about 700 pounds wheat. Ideas?

[Still_Small_Voice]

I have about 700 pounds of wheat in my food storage. It is close to ten years old. There is no way my family will consume this food in the next fifteen years. I wish to sell it for a modest price, exchange it for other food storage or give it away slowly to charitable organizations. I have a wheat grinder and can grind the wheat to flour for others. Any ideas on how I can use this commodity to bless others who are less fortunate and will use it?

 

I see too many Latter-Day Saints acquire food storage and then wastefully throw it out after it goes bad. This is sad to me and I do not wish to do this.

[zil]

I've eaten bread I made with 20+ year old wheat, so I'm thinking if it's sealed and stored correctly, it's not going bad any time soon.

No idea where / how to sell it.

[MrShorty]

How good is your wheat grinder? In our house, we are slowly grinding our wheat storage into flour into pancake mix. If your wheat grinder will handle it (or there are others in your ward with a wheat grinder), help organize a pancake breakfast ward activity kind of thing (or a scout activity or a send some along for a scout campout breakfast or girls camp or youth conference), and use your wheat ground into flour for the activity.

[paracaidista508]

I recently inherited 30 lbs of 30 plus year old wheat. Each can I have opened, I just made sure it sprouted. If it did, it was still good as new. If it didn't sprout, throw it away.

Every sample has sprouted so far. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

There is no way my family will consume this food in the next fifteen years.

I don't think you've actually done the math properly.

[Still_Small_Voice]

My family has consumed about 1 or 2 pounds of wheat flour in about five years since I had all the wheat.  I wish to trade it for white rice, or raw honey, sell it or give it to charities.  I might keep about 75 pounds of the wheat.

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

My family has consumed about 1 or 2 pounds of wheat flour in about five years since I had all the wheat.  I wish to trade it for white rice, or raw honey, sell it or give it to charities.  I might keep about 75 pounds of the wheat.

I'm guessing that you're now learning exactly why you're only supposed to have food storage of food you will actually eat.

 

But now that you've found yourself here, first consider that if the wheat is stored in an oxygen free environment, it will tend to keep for 30 years.  So, you've got time to eat some of it.

For the rest of it, you've got the following options:

1) Sell it.
2) Donate it.
3) Trash it.

If you've got livestock you can send it through a grinder and feed it to the livestock. 

1. If you feed uncracked wheat to chickens, they'll love the taste.  But it will go straight through them.  No nutrition.  It's the same as trashing it.
2. If you feed it to cattle be careful how much.  If they have too much, they will have digestive problems.
3. If you have goats, feed it all to them.  They will be able to fully digest it.  And their meat will be really tender and tasty.

[NeuroTypical]

You can call up your local food pantry or soup kitchen and see if they can do anything with it.  But they probably aren't set up to grind and bake stuff.

There's always "Food Storage Tuesday".  We should all be doing that anyway, so we don't end up with 10 year old wheat in our basement.  (Full disclosure, I'm finally getting into the hang of that, and using pork/chicken/beef chunks from 2006.)

[Still_Small_Voice]

I think I am going to look up local Utah food pantries and ask them if they want whole wheat flour.  I will grind it up and deliver it every few weeks if they want it.  I will follow up and let you know what I find out.

Edit:  I inherited this food storage from my brother who gave it to me when he moved away to Texas.  He did not have room for it.

Edited March 12, 2018 by Still_Small_Voice

[mirkwood]

Save it against the day of need.

[Still_Small_Voice]

Mirkwood, I do not plan of getting rid of my food storage.  I just want to get other food that I will use.  I do not mind having about 75 pounds of wheat but 700 pounds of wheat with me will just likely go to waste.

[Blossom76]

12 hours ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

I have about 700 pounds of wheat in my food storage. It is close to ten years old. There is no way my family will consume this food in the next fifteen years. I wish to sell it for a modest price, exchange it for other food storage or give it away slowly to charitable organizations. I have a wheat grinder and can grind the wheat to flour for others. Any ideas on how I can use this commodity to bless others who are less fortunate and will use it?

 

I see too many Latter-Day Saints acquire food storage and then wastefully throw it out after it goes bad. This is sad to me and I do not wish to do this.

Complete newbie un-educated question but why should we be storing that much food? Is food storage a recommendation from the church? Is so why?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm an investigator and I've not heard of this 

[NightSG]

6 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

There's always "Food Storage Tuesday".  We should all be doing that anyway, so we don't end up with 10 year old wheat in our basement.  (Full disclosure, I'm finally getting into the hang of that, and using pork/chicken/beef chunks from 2006.)

Uh...that really should have been in the freezer rather than the basement, most likely.

OTOH, what good is more than about a week of frozen food storage?  If you can't get food, there's a good chance electricity won't be reliable either.

[zil]

18 hours ago, zil said:

I've eaten bread I made with 20+ year old wheat, so I'm thinking if it's sealed and stored correctly, it's not going bad any time soon.

No idea where / how to sell it.

Mildly amusing fact - at the time I made bread with this wheat, it had been shipped to Moscow (Russia) with me, and it was as old as I was (and was stored in metal cans).   (It was a portion of my mom & dad's food storage - mom was terrified I would starve in Russia and insisted I take everything I needed to make my own bread - which is how I got my wheat grinder, bread mixer, and bread-making ingredients; and learned to make bread.)

Edited March 12, 2018 by zil

[mirkwood]

7 hours ago, Blossom76 said:

Complete newbie un-educated question but why should we be storing that much food? Is food storage a recommendation from the church? Is so why?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm an investigator and I've not heard of this 

https://providentliving.lds.org/food-storage?lang=eng

[mirkwood]

10 hours ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

Mirkwood, I do not plan of getting rid of my food storage.  I just want to get other food that I will use.  I do not mind having about 75 pounds of wheat but 700 pounds of wheat with me will just likely go to waste.

If it isn't in your way, I would still keep it.

[anatess2]

6 hours ago, NightSG said:

Uh...that really should have been in the freezer rather than the basement, most likely.

OTOH, what good is more than about a week of frozen food storage?  If you can't get food, there's a good chance electricity won't be reliable either.

I have eaten 10-year-old chicken from a jar.  Not frozen.  We had it on one of our Food Storage themed Relief Society activity.  It was pretty good, a bit on the salty side, but still good.  One of our elderly sisters jarred the chickens herself 10 years prior, kept it in her food storage pantry, then made chicken pot pie with it for the RS activity.

[zil]

6 hours ago, NightSG said:

Uh...that really should have been in the freezer rather than the basement, most likely.

OTOH, what good is more than about a week of frozen food storage?  If you can't get food, there's a good chance electricity won't be reliable either.

If you have your own generator that runs on a variety of fuels, and at least one fuel is still available, but (for some reason) grocery stores cannot receive new stock, said stores will run out of food ASAP, where your generator can keep your freezer going indefinitely (or at least longer than grocery stores can keep shelves stocked in an emergency).  Perhaps not good as a sole option, but I think there are still ways to ensure it's not completely pointless.

[NeuroTypical]

6 hours ago, NightSG said:

Quote

(Full disclosure, I'm finally getting into the hang of that, and using pork/chicken/beef chunks from 2006.)

Uh...that really should have been in the freezer rather than the basement, most likely.  OTOH, what good is more than about a week of frozen food storage?  If you can't get food, there's a good chance electricity won't be reliable either.

Indeed - a big important aspect of food storage, is to not need refrigeration. 

I must admit having some misgivings last month when I went down and re-discovered the "2006" on all that canned meat.  The chicken looked/smelled/tasted fine.  I've been combining it with corn/beans/green chilis, making NT's patented Chicken Chili, and taking it with me to work for my lunch.  3 cans in me so far, no adverse side affects.   I've also heated it up and combined it with dehydrated refried beans, and throwing it onto soft tortillas with salsa and cheese.  Even my picky daughter liked it.

They tell me that canned wet stuff like this will lose it's nutritional value over time, maybe start looking gross, but it'll remain able to sustain life as long as the can's integrity isn't compromised.  Air bulging in a can is a sign of botulism or other nasty stuff.  Rusty or leaking cans are discarded.  (I've never seen any of that in stuff canned at the LDS cannery.)

Rotating your food storage is a good idea.

[anatess2]

2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Indeed - a big important aspect of food storage, is to not need refrigeration. 

I must admit having some misgivings last month when I went down and re-discovered the "2006" on all that canned meat.  The chicken looked/smelled/tasted fine.  I've been combining it with corn/beans/green chilis, making NT's patented Chicken Chili, and taking it with me to work for my lunch.  3 cans in me so far, no adverse side affects.   I've also heated it up and combined it with dehydrated refried beans, and throwing it onto soft tortillas with salsa and cheese.  Even my picky daughter liked it.

They tell me that canned wet stuff like this will lose it's nutritional value over time, maybe start looking gross, but it'll remain able to sustain life as long as the can's integrity isn't compromised.  Air bulging in a can is a sign of botulism or other nasty stuff.  Rusty or leaking cans are discarded.  (I've never seen any of that in stuff canned at the LDS cannery.)

Rotating your food storage is a good idea.

For some reason, I have this thing in my psyche that believes jars are better than cans.  I don't know how it got there.

[NightSG]

12 hours ago, zil said:

If you have your own generator that runs on a variety of fuels, and at least one fuel is still available, but (for some reason) grocery stores cannot receive new stock, said stores will run out of food ASAP, where your generator can keep your freezer going indefinitely (or at least longer than grocery stores can keep shelves stocked in an emergency).  Perhaps not good as a sole option, but I think there are still ways to ensure it's not completely pointless.

In a long term outage like that, you're much better off conserving fuel for other things.  Past about a week, I'd be planning to finish off everything refrigerated ASAP, and save generator fuel to run a well pump, communications, etc.

[mordorbund]

13 hours ago, NightSG said:

In a long term outage like that, you're much better off conserving fuel for other things.  Past about a week, I'd be planning to finish off everything refrigerated ASAP, and save generator fuel to run a well pump, communications, etc.

Once every month or two I chow down on all the ice cream, popsicles, and frozen pizza, because.... um... "emergency power outage drill". ... Yeah, that's it.

 

[NeuroTypical]

22 hours ago, anatess2 said:

For some reason, I have this thing in my psyche that believes jars are better than cans.  I don't know how it got there.

Were you ever able to go volunteer at an LDS wetpack cannery before they closed and consolidated?  It was a very cool experience.   I bottled jam, and canned pork chunks/salsa/beef stew.

I think for home bottling/canning, it's cheaper and easier to get into bottling, and you'll be doing dry-pack only with cans, unless you do some serious investing in equipment.

Plus, the jars have those little popup lid things that add comforting confidence when it's not popped up.  Wet-pack cans are a bit more complicated to do right up front.

[NeuroTypical]

10 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

Once every month or two I chow down on all the ice cream, popsicles, and frozen pizza, because.... um... "emergency power outage drill". ... Yeah, that's it.

In my house, we have the running gag along those lines.  It came from an old cartoon show featuring Jon Lovitz, playing a pudgy film critic.  Once there was a brief power outage, and when the lights came on, he was halfway through his second can of "emergency pudding".   So whenever the lights went out in our house, everyone had to get between me and the beef jerky or Halloween candy or whatever.  Because, emergency.

[JohnsonJones]

On ‎3‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 5:50 PM, Still_Small_Voice said:

My family has consumed about 1 or 2 pounds of wheat flour in about five years since I had all the wheat.  I wish to trade it for white rice, or raw honey, sell it or give it to charities.  I might keep about 75 pounds of the wheat.

AS someone who had weevils infect their rice, rice is not as easy to keep and store a wheat.

We try to use our food storage and replace it as we go so it is constantly in use (this way we also have perishables, or items that last two or three years, but as we eat them and replace them they don't get thrown out).

If you want to increase your wheat usage, I'd say start making cracked wheat.  It is an incredibly healthy breakfast cereal (hot cereal) and you'd be surprised at how fast (even if it is just you and your wife) can go through a bunch of wheat eating it for breakfast.