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A bit of background: Mormons have long been counseled to store food in anticipation of some time when they may need it — unemployment, emergencies, etc. In earlier times the counsel was for a longer term — a year’s supply — with emphasis on storing wheat. I always thought that last emphasis was with the influence of Utah and Idaho wheat farmers but that’s another story. We also joke about having to move hundreds of pounds of that stuff every time someone moves. (Mormons are also famous for loading and unloading U-Haul trucks.)
My parents did that. With their San Francisco congregation (Balboa Ward, San Francisco Stake), they put hard red wheat in a bunch of one gallon cans, closed the can with a cork and sealed the cork with green wax. That was in 1948. They and we moved those cans with them from San Francisco, to Palo Alto in 1953, to San Jose in 1958, to our house in 1975, to our other home in San Jose in 1980, and then to our place in Utah in 2006.
My experience with stored wheat is that, despite assurances that the wheat is insect free, invariably when opened it is full of vermin of various sorts munching away on the wheat and somewhat perturbed that we are disturbing them. So it was with some trepidation that Ellen and I decided we ought to open one of those 65 year old cans of wheat. Take a look. Not a single bug.
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What a fun post, Keith. This sure brings back memories. My husband was at a graduate school with top science and agricultural programs, and a number of the LDS graduate students were studying agriculture. (Yes, I’m happy to say we know distinguished beet and apple and other plant experts.)
As a result, ward food storage projects involved extended discussions of scientific studies of wheat longevity and seed viability and nutrition, so based on those long-ago discussions, this is not a surprise.
(Oh, if, for any reason, people find themselves wanting to get rid of old food storage like this, don’t throw it out; donate it to someone with livestock.)
Because my father’s work had us moving every year or two, it seemed the buckets and barrels of wheat were always being hauled out or stashed away in whatever storage space was available. We had a small wheat grinder, so we did use ours regularly for cereal and flour, and used it often enough that we didn’t see too much bug damage.
I also remember the various gimmicks that were promoted from time to time as wards packaged wheat for storage — at one time, putting in an unwrapped stick of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum was supposed to keep the wheat clean because supposedly bugs didn’t like the smell of mint. In another ward, it was packing the wheat with dry ice to drive out the oxygen that was supposed to do the trick.
Whatever Balboa Ward did, though, seems to have worked beautifully.
Wow, as someone who remembers lifting up the lid of one of his mother’s several gallons wheat containers to find weevils making hay inside, this is impressive.
That said, it’s hard to think of anything more pleasant than the aroma of fresh bread made from freshly ground wheat. Proust had his madeleine. We have our bread.
While my post expressed my honest surprise that there were no bugs, the real insight from this experience is astonishment that we and my parents have hauled this stuff around from hither to yon for 65 years. Part of our culture, I guess.
When our ward in Los Angeles stored wheat in the late 1940s, I remember my parents put dry ice in the containers, closed them and let them first sit for 24 hours before sealing them in order to displace the oxygen in the container. I wonder if your parents did the same.
Something like that — I don’t remember the details. It was done as a project (welfare committee? priesthood quorum?) rather than at our home, so I probably only heard rather than saw it.
We bought 300 pounds of hard red winter wheat about thirty years ago, in six 50 pound metal cans. We also put the dry ice in the cans to preserve it. I have opened one of the cans a couple of times in the last 10 years, just to check on it, and found it still good.
The real problem is that short of our blender, we have no grinder or way of using this, short of hand grinding it ourselves with a couple of bricks. Not something that lends itself to any kind of regular rotation. I view it as somewhat of an artifact/legacy, that I hope to leave to my kids one day (six kids, one can each).
Stephen – I vaguely remember dry ice but I was only 5 years old at the time. And that hole on top is only about 2″ across so you couldn’t put a very big chunk in it. Not sure whether they used it or not.
I can’t imagine trying to subsist on this stuff for more than a day without organic results I’m not used to.