And the Winner Is...

In honor of the Red Ants Pants Festival this last weekend (a music festival that supports family farms, women in leadership and business and rural communities -- all things we wholeheartedly believe in), we are giving away a Prairie Heritage Farm Grain Share to a lucky raffle winner today. Here's how it worked: If you signed up for a Grain Share during the festival, your name was entered into a drawing for a free share (donated by our very good friends Matt and Bridget C. and their wonderful children).

And so, with Willa's help, we put all the names of our newest shareholders into a hat and drew the lucky winner.

Here's how it went down:

The suspense is just killing you, isn't it?

And the winner is...

Linda M. of Helena!

Even if you didn't win, you can still get in on the Grain Share this year. We are taking sign ups right now for the program, which means a delivery this winter of 60-80 lbs of our delicious ancient and heritage grains as well as lentils and chickpeas. This year, we're growing:

-Sonora Heritage Wheat
-Prairie Farro (also called Emmer)
-Bronze Barley
-Black lentils
-Black chickpeas

And this year, thanks to a grant from the Red Ants Pants Foundation, we're working toward buying a larger, stone mill to grind some of your share into fresh flour. So if you don't have a grinder? No prob. (But, these aren't just for breads. Read on for some ideas on how to use fresh, whole grains.)

Sign up here now to get in on the grain goodness and be "local" right down to your staples.

Why Grains and Beans?

You can go local with the biggest level of your food pyramid: bread, cereal, and pasta. These are amazing grains and legumes you can use in almost every meal, every day. And, it's more than just about bread for the flour and soup for the lentils. Think of protein-packed lentil cake, casseroles, lentil burgers, hummus-yummus. The possibilities are endless. And the grains: The grains are great as cereals (don't ever buy pre-packaged wheat cereal again), porridge (barley porridge was one of Willa's first foods) or simmered up and used whole in casseroles, soups or salads. One of our favorite shareholders uses these grains as a local (and protein rich) substitute for rice. Oh, you've never had vegetable-fried Farro? You haven't lived, my friend.

But Wait, Why Ancient and Heritage?

What makes our grains and legumes unique are the varieties we’ve chosen to grow. We grow older varieties, commonly referred to as ancient and heritage varieties, because of their rich flavors and textures as well as their valuable genetics and also to preserve those endangered seedstocks. Additionally, older varieties are able to adapt quickly to changing environments and our goal at Prairie Heritage Farm is to establish many different seedstocks uniquely adapted to both our particular climate in North Central Montana as well as the changing climate we are sure to face in the coming decades.

Join us as we rediscover these lost foods together.