Grains, Milling, Flour, and Storage

[Music] hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and today I want to talk a little bit about my country living grain mill and grinding flours and why I do that now I have a video I did maybe a year ago I don't know how long ago it was where I talked about the different grains that I store and how I store them I'll go ahead link to that video right up here because you may want to check that out but I'll go ahead and talk a little bit more about that now why is it that I prefer to store grains rather than storing just flour now I do have some organic unbleached white flour that I do store because it is a lot more shelf stable unlike storing whole wheat flours that have already been ground they are not shelf stable and if they are shelf stable it is because all the good stuff has been actually been removed all the good fat that's in there and so what happens with whole grains is once you grind them and the the wheat germ and the and all that just mixes together it then makes its shelf life only up to 72 hours and by that point you've lost a good amount of the nutrient value of your whole wheat flour there's not a lot of nutrient value and in white flour that's why we try to kind of really cut back I'm only use it when we really have to and focus more on using the whole grains so with that said you're much better off you're gonna get a much healthier flour if you grind it yourself because if you're buying it from the store and it's saying whole we whole rye or whatever it's been processed in such a way to make it shelf stable and you've lost a lot of the good nutrient value that way and if it still has everything in it and hasn't been processed then it's lost all this nutrient value because by the time it even gets to the store it's already old it's already past that point so if you take your your grains and you grind them up as needed especially on that day and then immediately put them to use that's gonna be the best use and to get the most out of your grains by doing that now so what you see right here is these are greens that I just started soaking a little bit ago and these are soft white we spelt hard white wheat and a little bit of buckwheat thrown in there just for just for some extra benefits and then back here are the ones that are have already been soaked and dried and I do have a video on how I do this as well I do it two different ways it depends on the time of the year I'll link to one of them right here but one of them involves using the electric dehydrator hooked up to our solar power during the months that our battery banks are topped off because we're getting a lot of Sun and then on the wood stove or near the wood stove at least in the wintertime to to dry so anyway I'll link to one of those you can check it out and see how I do that but yeah these have been pre soaked and dry and these have a little bit of homemade vinegar in it that's how I like to do that now I do have a video on so cumin grains I'll go ahead and link to it right up here so then once the grains are dry I simply pour the gravy however much I want into there and I'll show you a close-up of this as well now go ahead and bring it over and show you the inside of this but in a minute first I want to show you there's with our green mill the way it's set up a wheat we have it set up so it can be used two different ways I can grind my fianc and when I do that when I'm grinding by hand what I like to do is I like to count my rotations like maybe 20 rotations going that way 20 where I'll switch arms and then do 20 going that way going over here first okay then underhand turning the same way but turning my arm the other way so I'm working different muscles and then I'll do the same thing on the left-hand so I'll go right left and then turn my on the other way right and left so I'm getting a more equal workout all the way across my arms now the other thing you may have noticed is right here is a belt now Patrick about a year ago or so I don't recall how long it was because we first got that I spent the first couple years just climbing by hand but it is very time-consuming that's the only problem I like the workout it gives the arms but it takes a very long time especially when you're working with softer grains like the soft white wheat and the spelt they take much longer to go through to grind they're easier to grind you can spin it faster but for some reason they just they don't go through as quickly where the hard grains like the hard white wheat I can it's harder to turn the wheel but the grains go through faster so it's kind of funny that's one of the reasons why I like using a blend because I get a little I get the best of all of the above when I'm working with a mix blend like this but anyway so Patrick as my time started getting more and more precious because my skirt orders started taking off he took this old motor that he'd found it I think he might have found it secondhand at garage sale or I don't know I can't remember where he got it he has a video on that I'll go and link to it right up here and he explains all that stuff in there but I'll show you this motor back here it's an old motor and what he did is he cleaned it up got it all fixed up and then hooked it up so that we've got a belt here and it hooks to this motor and then it when we turn it on it it's gonna spin this wheel so that I can just plug it in and let it go and I don't have to worry about it so when we run it with you with the motor we take the handle off frankly for just me I don't worry about it because you know I'm smart enough to stay away from the from that but you just never know it's just for safety reasons it's best to take the handle off so otherwise this can be spinning around quite quickly you can see here here's the in there and one of the nice things about this you know they got this press that you put down in there and if it starts slowing down you can just kind of press on you can do this as you're grinding by hand press it down and that will help it go through a little bit quicker but you can also do it as you're running the motor to it and if you're wondering what this is over here it's got some grain stuck in it because I don't use it that much right now but this is a coffee grinder so when I need to call grind coffee by hand he's got this mounted actually directly to this table just like this so they don't move at all they're very solid and sometimes there was tons I would even grind coffee and flour all at the same time doing the coffee with the left hand in the flour with the right it takes a little bit of practice getting the rhythm down but you can do it so I want to remind you that this hand the handle if you're gonna use the motor should come off but I'm gonna have to go get some tools to take it off and I'm just gonna leave it for now but I'm gonna say a reminder as a safety measure take the handle off when you're running a motor with your country living grain mill so i'ma go ahead and plug this in so you can see how it works just kind of push them down in there and that's going to speed up the flow of the flowers coming through there but you don't want to do that too much if you now let me get to down closer [Applause] now one thing I forgot to do is I usually have a piece of cardboard it's just a a cereal box piece of cardboard from organic cereal that we like to buy and I like to set that back there and that actually keeps the flour from going back and spreading all over the motor but this is the container I like to use to catch my flour and then I can just put my snap-loc seal on there and then this little board is sitting here to raise the the container closer up right under the plate so that it's not spreading out all over the table as it's grinding so again I'm going to say it again make sure you remove the handle if you're gonna hook a motor up to it now back to the grain mill itself the country living grain mill is probably if you're looking into grain mills it's going to be as far as I know the most expensive one you're gonna find for me this was a really great investment I it really just depends on what your needs are the reason now some people might look at a KitchenAid and want to it and have no problem with the investment in a KitchenAid which for me I do even though this is more expensive than a KitchenAid this to me is far more valuable than a KitchenAid so it's going to depend on you and your needs but what I'm looking at because I understand the health of having your whole grains especially if they've been pre soaked or even sprouted and then dried and then you're grinding them yourself as you're kneading you're getting that flour good nice and fresh all the nutrients are still intact and you can grind it and use it right away so and the other reason why this this mill to me was the best investment is because I have the option of going completely off grid with the handle the crank handle which is how it comes or adding a motor to it for when my time is highly precious and this we can plug into our solar power and use it that way we don't actually have a solar power outlet in here but we can put an extension cord plug it into our solar power so if we ever anytime we lose our public power and I need to grind some flour are you so good at a solar power no big deal or I can go back to just cranking you know just grinding it by hand other great thing about this is that this is a very sturdy this thing is built like a tank a lot of the ones that you see on the market are made out of a lot of plastic there is no plastic on this none everything about it is it's a cast iron it's solid metal and then you got the nice wood handle that comes with it and I I think it's worth every penny personally and I know it's gonna last me a lifetime and you know what makes this even better it's not only made right here in the US it's made right here in my home state actually only a few hours away from us which is pretty dang cool so I was pretty excited to find that out and as a result I ended up getting mine pretty quickly but I will put the link down below to the country living grain mill that is my amazon link and you can get it the same price buy and directly from the company but if you buy through amazon that helps you know if you decide this is the mill you want to go with and you buy through our link it just helps us a little bit we get a small percentage for many amazon purchases made when people go through our links that's that's why we do that but because we're a remote we do actually I did actually purchase this on Amazon like quite a bit of these kind of things because you know getting these things locally it's kind of difficult because of where we live so anyway this is my grain mill of choice but go ahead and look into the other ones I know people that have the soli they're just don't like the wonder mill it's only an electric one and they love it they say it's great and you might want to look in that it's gonna be probably more I think it's about half the cost of getting this but I don't know how it's made it's really gonna just have to be up to you again I come back to the fact that I like the options I have with this because I can go completely off grid I can hook up to public power I can with or with the motor that we add or I can hook up to solar power now I believe Country Living has I think this company actually you can find a motor that you can buy from them or a kit and I think that might even be available on Amazon as well I'll go ahead and link to that below now here's the other thing about that and the link that I'm giving you to this is it also comes with the corn and bean auger and we have used that a few different times now to grind up corn whether it be the corn that we've grown ourselves or the whole corn that we have bought from Azur standard the whole organic non-gmo white corn for making white cornbread and it just works great I'm loving this thing so much so it has benefits and we also have a peanut butter auger and we have made peanut butter with it before we even have a video on that I'll go ahead and link to right up here so again my this is my personal recommendation you have to find out what you think's best for you but this is why we have this and I wanted to show you and also why we grind our own flowers and why I recommend it and sometimes people will find not not everyone I don't think this is the case for every person who has gluten issues but some people who have or even just have just regular gut issues they find that when they switch to an organic non-gmo grain and then one they grind up fresh and use right away they find that they can handle it a lot better so people who are maybe gluten sensitive might be able to handle a whole especially if it's a great your einkorn wheat which I do have some of that too I wanted to get more on my last order but they're out of stock right now I'm really liking that stuff that's a really good option so if you're doing that you're soaking it and you're grinding it and using it fresh that's gonna be the best thing for your gut and then there was one more thing I wanted to add is that whole grains like this in their whole form they will store for a very long period of time they can last forever especially when properly put up so what I do is I have grains that they're just sitting in the bags that they came in I'll show you a picture right here and they're sitting down in a in a big bucket that's got a gamma seal top on it and I'm more that's the bag that I'm working through and then I have other grains that I'm working through that are in I don't go through them as quickly so I have them in a mylar bag and that I can seal up and then put the gamma seal lid on there and there's a picture of that right here and then I have grains that are put away for long storage that they're also in mylar bags they're also in the gamma seal bucket but the difference with those is all the oxygens been removed and they've been heat sealed the mylar bag and so I can let those sit for years and years and years and they're gonna be fine so I just don't even touch those I'm not worried about it so if something happens and I can't get migraines anymore I can fall back on those at least for a while so I have a few buckets of those of my of my grains like spelt the hard white wheat and the soft white week okay one more thing I wanted to say about the grains and why I buy them in their whole form and store them well that's because they have an incredibly long shelf life in comparison to your flowers like I mentioned your flowers especially whole grain if they're whole grain and they're totally intact they're only good for 72 hours and that's it I mean they're there you're gonna lose all your nutrient value and then they're gonna go rancid whereas this I'm getting the full all the nutrition but I can let these sit in storage for many years especially depending on how they are how they are stored so just so you know there's actually there was some grains found in a pyramid in Egypt some wheat grains that they had been in there for about a thousand years and they tested him and found that 50 percent of them still sprouted and so and they and then testing their nutritional value they also found that they still held most of their nutritional value so that's pretty amazing and I don't know all the storage methods that were used but I know they didn't have mylar bags back then and gamma steel bucket but if you do you put your grains and I do this I have several buckets big big five gallon buckets actually mine bukka's gamma seal lid mylar bags the grains are in the bags we've taken all the oxygen out and we vacuum seal them I know those are gonna last for at least 25 years and so those ones I just leave I don't worry about rotating through those because I know they're gonna last a very long time I've done the same thing with popcorn because popcorn is also that way it will out they've done the say they found popcorn that was eight hundred years old and still popped if you go check out that video I mentioned earlier in the video you can see more information on how I store my grains but there's just a quick rundown but the the thing is is if you're into preparedness and wanting to put up food for long-term storage for when hard times hit whatever that may be something that happens only to you like whether it be a job loss and illness some kind of accident that causes you to be in the hospital for long periods of time knowing that you have food put up is just a really great thing and so knowing how to store up your grains rather than just flowers is really important so one more time the country living grain mill is what I recommend and at least go check it out and do a little shopping around and see what you think's best for you go find the other channels too that have different grain mills that they really like and you just kind of compare and figure out what you think is gonna be the best according to your situation and also financially because again this is not this is not cheap but as I said to me it's worth every penny and I'm glad that we made the investment it took us a few years to invest but it's one of those things you can just keep putting money away and save up for if you think it's important but anyway well I hope you enjoyed this video and that you learn something new thanks for watching take care and god bless [Music]

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 9,926

Rating: 4.9047618 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, grain mill, whole grains, milling flour, grain storage, why store grains, food storage, prepping, preparedness, pantry, bulk grains, whole wheat, whole spelt, buckwheat, white wheat

Id: 17CzgiZPsCQ

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019