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I was waiting till next week’s payday to order some grains. I see there are different kinds of wheat. What kind(s) do you recommend and for what use?

I am so grateful for all the info on this thread, yet I feel so inadequately prepared. We have 6 1/2 acres w/woods, a creek, and an area for pasture and thought we could be self-sufficient if we needed to. Now, the town has built up to the back and side of us. It’s like being in the country, but 1mile back are all the stores and a main road. I’m wondering how vulnerable we will be. Western suburbs of IL. But in discussing having to leave, not sure where we would go.

Hope you don't mind my jumping in here, since wheat is one thing I finally have a little bit of experience with ;) Hard wheat is for baking bread (makes all those nice gluten thingies) Soft wheat would be for biscuits or cakes.

I bought some red and white hard wheat to compare and play with my new grain mill. I can't hardly tell the difference between the loaves I make with each. So if one is cheaper, I'd go with that.

I am so grateful for all the info on this thread, yet I feel so inadequately prepared. We have 6 1/2 acres w/woods, a creek, and an area for pasture and thought we could be self-sufficient if we needed to.

Sounds like an excellent situation to me! Better than what we have. But we're not likely to move unless it's unsafe here, so we'll deal with the cards we have. There's some books out there (like the Survivor Club or something like that) that talk about how various personality types have survived difficult situations. Perhaps if you'd read something like that and can get into the right mindset first. I'm finding it impossible to plan for everything and accumulate enough 'stuff'. So I'm hoping a flexible attitude and willingness to accept reality no matter how ugly will make up for some of the lack of preparation and perfect location.

>>>I see there are different kinds of wheat. What kind(s) do you recommend and for what use?<<<

I grow mostly hard red winter wheat... Higher protein and develops good gluten for breads.

Most of what is grown around here is soft winter wheat - better for biscuits, cakes and such. I do have a patch of it growing only because I didn’t save enough hard red winter wheat.

I don’t really do anything with the Durham which is mostly for pasta.

There are several others - prairie gold, white, etc. but I haven’t done much more than try them and didn’t see much difference.

Gosh, hard to tell if you will have spill over from the highway... I would think that being better prepared is worth more than heading for the hills with no place to really go that was prepared.