Our breakfast barley is FINALLY here!! But first, a little context on HOW and WHY this became a product we wanted to deliver to our customers. We have been growing Egyptian Hulless Barley(naked barley or wild barley as I sometimes refer to it) for a couple of years with no "real" market for it. Our customers purchase it whole for soup & salad recipes and as flour for pancakes, waffles, crepes and cookies. Without our direct sales to consumers or the retailers that carry it, there is no where to sell this amazing grain. Sure it makes excellent animal feed but barley this nutritious and delicious needs to be for human consumption too!
Lets go a little further back....last spring I asked kelly to grow milling oats to offer oatmeal to our customers(he was happy to plant it IF I found the seed...which I of course did). While it was growing, I ran out of my steel cut oats I had been eating for breakfast from the grocery store and asked if Kelly would just use our whole Egyptian Hulless Barley instead(he was an eggs and bacon guy back then). He made them, I LOVED it and kept asking for it. After a week of him making me breakfast barley, I convinced him to skip the eggs and bacon and give the barley a try...he did...and he has been a BARLEY MAN eversince!! We have been breakfast barley eaters ever since and became determined to find a flaker that would be efficient and deliver the quality of flakes that I get from my little flaker here at home. Needless to say, as with many other things, it was easier said than done. The flakers available either did thousands of pounds an hour OR 4 lbs and hour with really nothing inbetween. Farmer innovation to the rescue once again. It took more time than I would have liked but the quality of these flakes are worth the wait.
Here is WHY we 💚LOVE💚 Egyptian Hulless Barley:
This Ancient grain pre-dates wheat and goes back 10,000 years.
The plant has so many soil health benefits; it has broad leaves to canopy and protect the soil surface from heat during HOT days and the root structure is massive giving the plants access to more water & more biologically available nutrients in the soil.
The plants in the field are picture perfect and wild looking.
The flavor of the barley is unparalleled. It is nutty and sweet.
This grain boasts a much higher protein content than our milling oats and does not require an extra step of "dehulling" after harvest which means less processing on on our farm and more whole nutrition to your fork!
While we delivered the flaker to our production team, Kelly also dressed the stones of the New American Stone Mill. One of the BEST things about my farmer is that he never stops learning! He watched some YouTube videos, bought the tools and went to work. Dressing the granite stones will produce a flour that is softer in texture with smaller bran flakes. Smoother flour with whole nutrition makes the pasta extruding for me team much more efficient and consistent.
Until our next adventure...💚