Let's hear it for kernza

[UPDATE: University of Minnesota leads project to boost yield, uses of crop that could cut water pollution]

The bread is a success. At least the Better Half, the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Yr obt svt all liked it. Some claimed it's the best bread I've baked so far. The flavor is subtle enough that I'm going to try increasing the amount of kernza in the next loaf.

artisan sourdough kernza bread

Photo by J. Harrington

It's exciting, and fun, and rewarding, to be baking near the leading edge of a new grain product that seems headed toward being a major contributor to better food and helping solve climate restoration. Support for regenerative agriculture is growing. Cargill recently announced their commitment to helping farmers convert 10 million acres from conventional agriculture to regenerative, helping to restore soil health. A few years ago, the Star Tribune published a series on The Future of Food, starting with the idea that "Changing consumers ignite food revolution."  Either my memory is as bad as I fear it is or I somehow missed the entire series. (I'll read it over the next few rainy days.) Anyhow, the series presents some ideas I find challenging. I'm becoming more and more convinced that big is bad. Global corporations have created many of the problems we currently face and there's not much in the way of a global government to control them. Remember "too big to fail," and "get big or get out!"? Then came, et alia, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Beth Dooley's In Winter's Kitchen and I was on the way from a long-time role as a hunter / fisher / gatherer to becoming a locavore. I've almost learned to enjoy eating most veggies. What if all "big ag" were restorative and regenerative? Is that even feasible? People end up in ruts when everyone walks down the same part of the road, right, middle or left.

whole grain for Better Half, flour for the bread maker

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm wondering if all the troubles and turmoil we've experienced for the last three+ years is indeed a sign that we are reaching / have reached the end of the era in which Western "civilization" exploited the earth with disrespect and an utter lack of reciprocity. Despite the challenges we now face, there are numerous people and organizations heading down new (or old indigenous) paths based on acknowledgement that we are all related. Humans have coevolved with our environment and will learn, one way or another, the necessity of taking care of it so it can take care of us. Baking artisan sourdough bread, especially with kernza flour, lets me feel that I'm part of creating a survivable because sustainable future for all of us.

Prayer for Words

N. Scott Momaday - 1934-

         My voice restore for me.
                           Navajo
 

Here is the wind bending the reeds westward,
The patchwork of morning on gray moraine:

 

Had I words I could tell of origin,
Of God’s hands bloody with birth at first light,
Of my thin squeals in the heat of his breath,
Of the taste of being, the bitterness,
And scents of camas root and chokecherries.

And, God, if my mute heart expresses me,
I am the rolling thunder and the bursts
Of torrents upon rock, the whispering
Of old leaves, the silence of deep canyons.
I am the rattle of mortality.

I could tell of the splintered sun. I could
Articulate the night sky, had I words.

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