Wheat!

Nash's Farm has been selling bags of wheat berries at the markets the past couple of weeks. They're going for $1.50 a pound, which seems insanely cheap to me for a food that so many people use, but so few people grow locally.

I recently read "Plenty," an account of a year of local eating by a Vancouver couple, which devoted quite a bit of space to their quest for local wheat. For most of the year the only wheat they found had been stored for months in someone's barn, and they had to pick through it and separate the wheat berries from the rat turds before they could use it.

So I was excited to see these on Nash's table. I asked why so few farmers grow wheat in this area and they said you need a drier climate, which they have because they're based in Sequim. They're doing some field trials along with Washington State University to determine which varieties will grow best in this area. I also got the impression that it's not really worth growing wheat unless you do it on a fairly large scale.

I've been cooking the wheat berries like rice and eating them with beans and vegetables. The folks at Nash will be sending some over to a friend's restaurant to be ground into flour. I hope some of that makes its way to the markets, as well.