Finnriver Farm & Cidery on the Olympic Peninsula, generally known for its orchards and cider also grow local grains. The first generation founders, Keith and wife Crystie, started Finnriver Farm & Grainery’s pandemic-inspired CSA grain boxes a few weeks into the pandemic which delivers a sense of food security to the local community. Read the full Seattle Times article here.
Excerpt:
“A few weeks into the pandemic, I turned to (Keith) with a question about local food security,” Crystie says.
“He said, ‘We’ll have plenty to eat; there’s 40,000 pounds of grain in the barn.’ It made me very motivated to think about how we could make this resource available to the community, understanding that we were in new terrain as far as food systems’ resilience and stability.”
The CSA boxes included an even more unusual harvest — sacks of hard, rice-shaped wheat berries, the edible portion of wheat kernels, encompassing the entire germ, bran and endosperm. While not a standard item in the modern U.S. kitchen, they can be milled into whole-wheat flour or cooked like any other grain for a nutritious meal.