Heirloom Turkey Red Wheat Berries

$8.00$67.50

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Know your farmer. This grain grown by: Tom Luhrs Family Farm.

This product cannot be shipped outside the US.

NOTE: We are temporarily not allowed to call this product “certified organic”. Just prior to the COVID-19 crisis, Breadtopia moved to a new facility and now, due to health safety concerns, all organic certification inspections have been put on hold in our area. Our prior facility was certified organic and our new one will be as soon as inspections begin again. Until that time, know that we are still sourcing exactly the same certified organic grains from the same producers we always have, and we are packaging and milling with the same procedures we have always used. We just can’t call it “certified organic” until we can get our new facility inspected and certified.

(3 customer reviews)

These are whole unmilled wheat berries. Performs similarly to and can be use in place of modern Hard Red Winter wheat.

Turkey Red Wheat, once the dominant variety of hard red winter wheat planted throughout the central U.S., is back in production.

“Turkey” variety hard red winter wheat was introduced to Kansas in 1873, carried by Mennonite immigrants from Crimea in the Ukraine, fleeing Russian forced military service. In the mid-1880s, grainsman Bernard Warkentin imported some 10,000 bushels of Turkey seed from the Ukraine, the first commercially available to the general public. That 10,000 bushels (600,000 pounds) would plant some 150 square miles (10,000 acres). By the beginning of the twentieth century, hard red winter wheat, virtually all of it Turkey, was planted on some five million acres in Kansas alone. In the meantime, it had become the primary wheat variety throughout the plains from the Texas panhandle to South Dakota. Without “Turkey” wheat there would be no “Breadbasket.”

Like many traditional crop varieties, by modern times the old variety of Turkey Red had all but vanished. Fortunately, a few enterprising Midwest farmers have kept the old seed stock in production, so we are now are able to offer this heirloom wheat and flour to our customers.

Slow Food USA Recognizes Turkey Red WheatBrooklyn, New York – Sept. 29, 2009 – The Slow Food USA Ark of Taste, a catalog of delicious foods in danger of extinction, has been expanded to include Turkey Red Wheat as one of twelve new food products, nominated by farmers, growers, chefs and food enthusiasts from across the country who are concerned about the diversity of our food supply.

To be “boarded” onto the US Ark of Taste, a food must: (1) be at risk biologically or as a cultural tradition, (2) be linked culturally or historically to a specific region, ethnicity or traditional production practice, (3) have outstanding taste, defined in the context of local traditions and uses, and (4) have sustainable market potential.

Ark of Taste foods are those that have been threatened by market standardization, industrial agriculture, and environmental damage. “This is not only about food diversity but food security,” explains Jenny Trotter, associate director of Slow Food USA’s biodiversity program. Seventy-five percent of the world’s food now comes from only seven main crops, and from increasingly fewer varieties of those crops—ones that have been selected to produce not the most nutritious or delicious food, but those best suited to large-scale production and distribution methods.

Slow Food USA and its partners in the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) Alliance are promoting the new concept of eater-based conservation. “We don’t want to preserve foods as museum pieces or only conserve the genetic diversity of our food supply,” said Slow Food USA’s biodiversity committee chair Ben Watson. “We want to get these foods back onto farms, back into the marketplace and back onto people’s tables.”

 

Life Latch 5 Gallon Bucket with LidThis is the 5 gallon bucket and lid that the wheat berries come in when the 35 lb option is chosen.

For more information on the bucket and lid, click here.

Heirloom Turkey Red Wheat Berries

We have compiled some information about long term grain storage (click).

  1. Brandon Lee Lewis (verified owner)

    The original American wheat. (From the Ukraine)

    After trying this wheat I see what taste profile they are trying to go for when they add all of the additives to boost taste in order to mimic the original in store bought and modern wheat products. However no artificial alterations to a modern wheat hybrid and the products thereof can mount up to the real one.
    I’m glad Turkey Red Wheat was saved and I was able to bake a sourdough loaf using this bread. We love it in my household. It comes out moist with a good crumb and crunchy crust. The taste is as if spice has been added to it in small amounts like caraway seeds and cinnamon. However, there is another part of it’s taste profile that can’t be explained but once you taste it you’ll see for yourself and confirm what I explained earlier. That’s at least what we think.
    I hope that a way can be found where Turkey Red Wheat becomes again one of the primary wheats in a diverse American grain selection. While the farmers who grow it make a good living from cultivating and selling it. Not only for the sake of taste but for our health as well.

    Somethings should not be tampered with; this wheat is one of them. Let’s not lose this again.

  2. Greg Ircink (verified owner)

    Flavorful- almost like spice is mixed in, like cinnamon – but it’s just the strong flavor of this wonderful wheat.

  3. Christian Scott (verified owner)

    Like this red wheat the most.

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