GROWING GRAINS By: John Vivian

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For next year's seed, select the fattest, thickest seed heads or kernels. Dry them especially well. Store in a cool place where they will experience at least several months of freezing weather, as many seeds need cold during winter dormancy. An open-mesh bag hung where the mice can't get it is best if you doubt the seed's dryness. Don't store inside where it is warm or you are asking for weevils.

Milling

An individual whole grain of rice or corn is called a kernel, while wheat, oats and other small grains are called berries. Whole kernels or berries can be boiled and eaten as stick in our teeth (as well as to your ribs) groats. Crushed by hand or in the rollers of a cracking or rolling mill, they become faster-cooking cracked grain gruel. Oatmeal, or rolled oats, falls into this category.

In a grist mill, they are forced from a hopper by an auger to be ground between ridges cut into the face of a set of milled steel, cast-iron or gritty stone burrs. Distance between grinding burrs is easily adjustable. Wide-spaced burrs produce a coarse meal such as cornmeal or dehulled (like hominy) wheat farina. With burrs closely spaced, any grain from wheat to rice to corn can be finely ground into flour. Metal burrs will grind anything, though not as finely as stone burrs, which can clog if milling an oily seed such as peanuts.

A modern high-capacity semicommercial stone mill such as CGS's Meadows 30" burr Mealmaster (which retails for $6,900) will fine-grind an acre's output of corn or wheat-a good 30 bu-in an hour.

Smaller "community-sized" mills such as Meadows 1-hp stone mill is sold, with electric motor and shields, by Lehman's for about $1,200. It can fine-grind a pound of grain in 30 seconds.

Home-scale electric mills in the under$500 range such as Retsel's X-hp MilRite can stone-grind a cup of grain cake flour fine in less than two minutes.

There is a variety of imported and U.S.made old timers such as the original Quaker City, as well as innovative new mills, including Lehman's exclusive Our Best Grain Mill, that fall into the $150 to $250-plus range. All are capable and many offer a choice of hand or electric power, stone or steel burrs, and come in a variety of materials and capacity ranges.

Large, long-handled, heavy at 15 pounds, under $100, cast iron hand mills on the Quaker City pattern, such as the Universal Mill or Corona, are imported from Medalin, Columbia. Their relatively crude, sand-cast-iron burrs take two to three minutes to grind a pound of grain to cornmeal consistency, and half-again longer or more if you put it through twice to produce bread flour.

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