Wheat a Puzzle in Oregon
CORVALLIS, OR -- JUNE 27, 2006
By Cathleen Hockman-Wert
While researching the cookbook Simply in Season, I learned a lot about local eating in Oregon. I wouldn't have thought it would be so hard to find local wheat. In fact, Oregon produces a lot of wheat, mostly in the drier, eastern part of the state. In 2005 wheat was Oregon's sixth-highest value commodity. However, the Oregon Wheat Commission states that 85 to 90 percent of our wheat is exported, and most of it ends up in Asia. You see, this is soft white wheat: the kind used in noodles, flatbreads and quick breads. The yeast breads we eat here use hard red wheat varieties that grow well further east.
Both the organic and conventional pastry flours from Bob's Red Mill up the
valley near Portland are made from soft white wheat from Oregon and Washington.
The good folks at Oregon Tilth led me to Azure Farm, a 2,000-acre organic wheat
and cattle ranch in the foothills east of Mount Hood. Their website tells the
story of how the family stopped using chemical pesticides and fertilizers and
gradually saw the soil increase in health. Under the name Azure Standard the
business now markets a wide variety of organic products all over the country.
Yes: they do mill and sell their own flours locally.
I chatted recently with a friend who has been experimenting with growing wheat
for his own family's use at his home in the Oregon Coast Range. They've found
that soft wheat works fine for the sourdough bread they like to bake in their
wood-fired cob oven. (Bread machines, no.) When I listen to the process of
sowing, harvesting and threshing the grain - then separating the wheat from the
chaff by throwing handfuls from one end of a long tarp to the other - wow, I have
to be grateful for the farmers that bring me those precious bags of flour.
