Q and A: Best variety of wheat for flour, New pressure canner, Preserving honey, and chickens ate pesticide
Best variety of wheat for flour
We are going to plant some wheat to harvest for flour. What is the best variety for flour?
Amy Arthur
Mineral Point, Wisconsin
You’ll want a hard spring wheat. I prefer a red wheat, but any good variety will sure make some good flour for you. — Jackie
New pressure canner
I am new to canning and am doing a test run with my new pressure canner. I am practicing at 10 pounds pressure for 75 minutes. In getting my canner to 10 lbs, initially it went over by about 4 lbs. I already had the timer on. As long as it doesn’t go below the recommended pressure can I still keep timing or do I need to reset the timer?
Cindy
Dandridge, Tennessee
Yes, going over pressure by a few pounds is not any concern. We try to maintain the correct pressure but sometimes we just don’t watch it close enough. As long as the pressure doesn’t drop below the correct pressure needed for safe canning, you’re good to go. You’ll find that you soon LOVE your canner and all the great food you are putting on the pantry shelves! — Jackie
Preserving honey
Jackie, I recently bought a 12 lb can of honey. I need to put this in smaller amounts and want to can it in pint jars. How do I go about this? Does it have to be heated, put in water bath or pressure and for how long?
Mrs. Otho Laurance
Canyon City, Oregon
Good news! You don’t even need to process your honey in a canner. Just pour it into sterilized jars to within ½ inch of the top and put on a sterilized canning lid and screw down the ring. Your honey is good to go for years and years. If it should get cool and get crystallized, just warm it up in a pan of hot water and it will again get liquid. — Jackie
Chickens ate pesticide
I usually don’t use any pesticides, but the ants have been so bad- SWARMING inside and outside my house this spring that I finally broke down and got some Amdro. None of the natural products I tried were helping at all. Well, now I am regretting it! My free ranging chickens found the pile and ate it. It has been a few days and none of them got sick, for which I am grateful, but I am wondering if I should throw out their eggs for the next week so we don’t ingest the stuff. What do you think?
Erica
Manor, Texas
Discarding the eggs would probably be a good idea. I think a week should do the trick. I’d hate to be eating eggs tainted with pesticide, too. — Jackie
Trevor,
Sorry I didn’t go into length on this answer. Most homesteaders are growing wheat for bread flour; I know very few who grow their wheat for pastry flour. I grow a hard red spring wheat for our flour. I’ve never had a single person complain about the quality of my biscuits made from it. I even make pie crusts and cookies from this flour. For cakes, I use all purpose flour bought in bulk as we don’t have the room to grow wheat for pastry flour. Some hard spring wheat varieties are: Barlow, Edge, Pivot, Select, Bronze Chief and Prairie Gold. We grow Prairie Gold, sold by Wheat Montana in Three Forks, MT. They have a website where you can order wheat and other products. We do not grow Durham wheat, either, for lack of space. Durham wheat is most commonly ground for flour that is made into pasta. I make noodles from our plain wheat and also all purpose flour from the store. Sorry to have disappointed you Trevor and others. Spring is VERY busy here on the homestead and besides that we have David’s graduation, his open house, our wedding and the three days at the energy fair to prepare for.
Jackie
This is in regard to the ant problem. When I took over a garden plot in a community garden it was infested with ants. I tried every organic solution I could find to no avail. It wasn’t till bees took up housekeeping in my garden cabinet that the bee keeper who came to relocate the Queen bee told me to use cinnamon to get rid of the ants. It’s taken close to a year and a whole lot of cinnnamon to eradicate them but it really works. Sprinkle liberally wherever you see them. Eventually you’ll see less and less.
P.S…Jackie, I think you’re the greatest!
Doesn’t the eventual use to which the flour will be put make a rather large difference in the sort of wheat one should plant, Jackie? Your hard wheat will make fine bread flour but terrible cake flour and passable, at best, biscuits. Usually you are so much more thorough in your answers …