And I still have the wheat grinder I made back in the early 70s as an Elder's Quorum project. I haven't used it in many decades, but it's there ready for action.
Once I retired (and decades after leaving the church), I started baking. I like to grind my own wheat as the flour contains wheat germ, which is removed from otherwise "whole wheat." I buy 25 - 50 lbs of wheat at a time and like having that much on hand as an emergency supply
I bought my commercial wheat grinder on Craigslist. You might want to list yours there. Somebody would love to have it.
Like you, I do use wheat and have a grinder. I learned to make Whole wheat bread back when I was a little girl and I only buy one bag of wheat. My mother didn't grow up in the church and was never a "wheat hoarder". Her mother grew up in Logan and taught her to make bread. I have developed my own favorite recipe but do not refer to wheat as food storage. I choose to refer to it as a "culinary enjoyment" for me and my family. However, if you read in my post on this topic much farther down, it most certainly is not for everyone.
I have a year's supply of propane. It stores forever without going bad. I cook with it and heat with it and run the generator with it to run the well pump. I keep my food storage rotated pretty well. Mostly a lot of canned food and dry food . None of this horrible canned wheat crap. Got lots of ammo. I guess I'm ready.
Don't ask me why. My mother used to bug me about it and I'd just tell her that I'd deal with it if anything ever happened. At that point, I was actually looking forward to the end, hoping it would come. The day I found out my ex was gay in March 1983, I never worried about the end happening again.
We did end up with a lot of my ex's parents' supply of outdated cans of food. We threw it out.
One of my last acts of defiance was to pass on buying wheat when they sent the list around in Elders Quorum.
The snooty president asked how I'd survive without wheat. I laughed and asked how he'd survive with it.
He said he'd have bread and mush.
I asked how he'd bake bread without yeast, butter, eggs, sugar and milk. I asked how long his family would survive with scurvy from lack of fruits and vegetables.
I told him I would rather buy fruits, vegetables, rice, pasta, meats and soups.
Brought the whole meeting to a standstill.
Apparently not enough people bought wheat for them to make a delivery.
Did you ever eat one of those "Wheat cakes"? My ex-TBM wife made some with her Mormon approved wheat grinder. Wow, the taste was very bland but talk about cleaning out your system....
I never bought into the idea of food hoarding, as that's what I consider what the Mormon idea of the year's supply to be. It's one thing to have extra food and other supplies for a disaster, but if your house is damaged and determined to be unsafe, all that wheat and other stuff is wasted. If there's a flood, that wheat will become moldy and too toxic to consume.
Following the Second Coming that was going to be nothing but really beautiful weather and ideal living conditions, except for the lack of ALL the evil people who politely died after digging their own graves, falling in and pulling the dirt back over them. Their absence is what caused the lack of food production and delivery. So while things were straightened out in the new theocracy, the saints lived on their year's storage.
On it. After seeing and hearing all the Disaster stories, from war to natural disasters, you better be able to move fast, get out and away. So prepared and portable.
I've always done "good" if I winged it month to month. Never did get into saving up food for a two year "rainy day."
I didn't have the space to if I'd wanted to. Or the room in my budget to make that happen. Feeding my growing family was challenging enough. I always felt it a great blessing if we had enough to get through each day. Fuhgetabout a year in advance.
Concentrating on the present took enough of my energy and focus (still does.)
As a child I'd hide things under my bed when cleaning my room when I was in a hurry to clean it. Otherwise haven't really stored things under beds all too much - but they do make good hiding places.
Tunnel vision tends to be the norm for leaders who live insular Lives where most are from one specific area. Permit me to mention something that was ignored and to my knowledge probably never Discussed when they came up with the idea of a storage program Involving wheat.
Crohn's disease, Celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, diverticulitis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) all are major and serious inflammatory diseases that are made worse by eating wheat. Several million individuals in the US alone suffer from these disorders
Imagine purchasing 2 years worth of wheat and then discovering that you or a family member suffers from one of these illnesses
One time I stocked up with various foods from the church mill. Later I found that all of one of the grains had weevils. The other grains were fine. I was not happy hauling a few hundred pounds of grain up from the basement and throwing it away. I found out later that grain can have weevil eggs in it and so putting it in sealed buckets as I did wouldn't stop the weevils. I think the grain could be irradiated to kill the eggs, but clearly the church didn't do that.
As a non-lads, I have to admire those families of a RM, getting married and having kids asap, paying the bills on a limited income, paying the tithing and acquiring 1-2 years of food, working numerous callings.
Such dedication, I would never been able to be fully worthy of being a good member of the church.