Chicken & Barley Soup (Canadian—New Brunswick

“Hudson Bay” White Lammas Wheat

French Canadians were early Palouse Country explorers and many settled in the Walla Walla area (“Frenchtown”) and Oregon’s Willamette Valley were retired workers for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Ft. Vancouver and other posts maintained by “The Honorable Company” throughout the Pacific Northwest. HBC Governor Sir George Simpson personally brought the region’s first commercially raised grains— English White Lammas, on his first personal inspection of Columbia Department operations in 1825. 

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Chicken & Barley Soup (Canadian—New Brunswick)

½ teaspoon pepper

1 cup carrots sliced

1 bay leaf

½ cup celery chopped

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons fresh parsley cut

½ lbs. chicken 

10 ounces frozen peas

2 quarts water

 ½ lb. mushrooms sliced

½ cup pearl barley  

2 tsp poultry seasoning

1 med onion chopped

Combine chicken, water, barley, onion, poultry seasoning, salt, pepper, paprika, and bay leaf in large kettle and bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer approximately 1 hour until chicken is tender. Remove chicken from broth. Cook chicken, remove meat from bones and dice. Add carrots, celery, and mushrooms to broth. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Return diced chicken to soup mixture with peas and parsley; cook until heated through.

Palouse Colony Farm Officially Recognized as Washington State Historic Site!

We’re pleased to report that our Palouse Colony Farm was placed on the Washington State Historic Preservation Office Register for the original barn and outbuildings and the property’s role in Pacific Northwest history as an important “clearing house” for German immigrants from Russia arriving in to region from 1880s to the 1910s. State Preservation Officer Mike Houser made the presentation at the October, 2016 meeting of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. 

Richard and wife Lois (right) at the State Historic Preservation Meeting, Tacoma

The barn (c. 1895) is the oldest building at the farm, which also includes the house and blacksmith shop, which was established by a German immigrant families from Russia’s Volga River region who arrived in the Washington’s Endicott-St. John area in 1882 and established the colony in 1889. The location became a thriving settlement that provisioned families coming from the Old Country to settle in the region, and according to historian Richard Sallet, some 100,000 first- and second-generation Germans from Russia followed to live in Pacific Northwest by 1920. Colony founder parents described the Palouse as a “Land of Milk and Honey” to their children who tended the colony’s dairy herd and raided bee hives along the river. The newcomers used farming methods of medieval origin—long, narrow Langstreifen fields (akin to English furlongs) in three-crop rotations (Dreifelderwirtschaft), a shared “commons” (Almenden) for grazing and gardens, and harvests with sickle and scythe.

In recent years we have reestablished the farm to grow landrace grains using the same Old World farming methods used by the farm's original founders. 

Palouse Colony Farm and Heritage Grain Plots (Turkey Red wheat, Scots Bere barley)

The Eastern Palouse Uplands

"Morning Mist" curtesy of John Clement (photo taken at the eastern Palouse uplands)

The Palouse River headwaters are born in the clear stony brooks of Idaho's Hoodoo and Clearwater mountains and fed by tributaries emerging from the Thatuna Range located between the river's north and south forks. These eastern uplands are composed of the western buttes' parent belt quartzites and argillites that rose with the Rocky Mountains when the Cascade Range had not yet emerged above the Pacific waters. In the formative processes of this early Mesozoic Age of explosive Rocky Mountain strato-volcanoes, hot magmatic fluids under great pressure penetrated this younger earth's crust and brought certain metals in gaseous state nearer the surface to form soluble compounds like gold chloride and aluminum-iron silicate. In places where water penetrated to great depth these compounds dissolved, mixed with the magma, and were forced through fissures with other solubles like silicon dioxide, or quartz, to create veins containing precious metals and alamandine garnet crystals.

Where this petrographic drama transpired under ancient weathered surfaces as in the Hoodoos, these deposits were worn by water until soft yellow flakes, larger nuggets, and violet-red gemstones fell out into streams which usually held these heavy particles near their sources. As in other high places along the Pacific Slope, indications of this placer gold in North Idaho resulted in nineteenth century regional rushes as prospectors flocked to the rumored El Dorados. Dodecahedron-faced garnets and rainbow-colored "harlequin" opals have also been sought in the eastern Palouse as the region's only semi-precious stones. 

Sickles and Sheaves — Farming, Faith, and the Frye (Part 1)

This blog post is part of a series I (Richard) am writing about my past life experiences that helped develop a love and appreciation for agricultural heritage in general and landrace grains in particular. The series is called "Sickles and Sheaves - Farming, Faith, and the Frye" and you can view the other parts of this blog series here.

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My Personal Connection with Landrace Grains

Somewhere in one of the outbuildings on our small Palouse Country farm in southeastern Washington, our parents kept a scythe (pronounced sigh, or sithe) in semi-retirement. The old implement appeared only when barnyard grass and weeds needed to be cleared, or when Dad thought his two sons had unnecessary time on their hands. We didn’t have a tractor-powered sickle mower like some of our neighbors, though a thoroughly rusted reaper-binder from our grandfather’s day rested securely in the branches of a cherry tree on the hillside just above our house. The dilapidated contraption with wooden reel, drive chains, and sprockets was an object of endless boyhood fascination. Although the machine had been abandoned long before Dad took over the farm in the 1940s, he had somehow mastered the elegant art of binding sheaves for decorative use or for us to enter into the Palouse Empire Fair, which to this day still has grain sheaf competition.

Our old scythe’s serpentine handle seemed taller than I stood so was awkward to handle. But Dad could adjust the weathered grips, which he called nibs, and would offer refresher lessons in swath, rhythm, and sharpening before sending my brother or me out to battle formations of wheatgrass and Jim Hill mustard. “There’s a right way, and a wrong way,” was his familiar refrain while demonstrating many tasks like this one for our rural edification, and as if watching some peculiar country dance he showed how to keep the heel down with each measured step to avoid sticking the point of the blade into the ground.

Located between the small rural communities of Endicott and St. John, Washington, our place was deep in the Pacific Northwest’s Palouse Country—a legendary grain district known for steeply rolling hills and a favored destination for landscape photographers from around the world. I suspect farms like ours held in common with many others a peculiar geographic nomenclature necessary for communication about what had happened long before, or what needed to be done with scythe, hoe, or other tool. Far behind the house we had the Huvaluck (Hessian dialect for “Oat Hole,” from Hafer, German “oat”), Windmill Hill, and Spud Draw where our clan had planted potatoes in an endless furrow during the week of Good Friday for at least three generations. The head of the draw led over a narrow hill aptly named The Saddle. With only a half-section, our farm was small even by 1960s standards but there could be no doubt where we might be directed to tend a thistle patch or harrow or rendezvous with the combine to unload grain since so many named features existed on that tussled 320-acre half-section.

Volga German Scything Scene (1768)

Concordia Center for Volga German Studies, Portland, Oregon

Over time I came to understand my father’s and grandfather’s familiarity with the land’s every twist and turn, and eventually my own, in terms that defy analytics. Nature writer Barry Lopez characterizes such natural relationships in Home Ground as “the unembodied call of a place, that numinous voice” when a hill, draw, or untilled sodpatch wildlife sanctuary seems to become “something that knows we are there.” This mystical relationship fosters a deep connection with landscape that predisposes some to feel a kinship of comfort and familiarity with certain other places—in my case the undulating Hessian Vogelsberg district in central Germany, and the steeply rolling Bergseite of southern Russia’s black earth Volga region; places inhabited by my ancestors long ago. People have perceived these forces since time immemorial, and they continue to inspire. The Lake District sustained Wordsworth like Suffolk enlivened Constable, and the Great Plains fed the souls of Willa Cather, Ole Edvart Rølvaag, and Hamlin Garland.

The broad hill rising westward from our house toward the entangled cherry tree reaper was steep enough to accommodate a spacious root cellar attached to our ramshackle porch. The cellar had been built not long after our paternal Russian-born German great-grandparents arrived in the Palouse in the early 1890s, so we were warned to stay out due to threat of collapse from the weight of the ground above. Our elders called these places zemlyanka, Russian for “earth-home,” which likely were successors to the medieval German grubenhaus (“dug-house”) their ancestors had fashioned in Hesse. Our people had lived in such places when first immigrating to Russia from Germany during Tsarina Catherine the Great’s reign 250 years ago. Some even inhabited such dens after arriving in the Pacific Northwest until a proper family home could be built.

The young are disposed to explore, so in our youth we ventured inside the cellar periodically to see dimly lit evidence of life from yesteryear. An exceedingly dusty pituvfka kitchen worktable stood against one wall with two rounded flour bins suspended beneath, and some old glass canning jars remained on wooden shelves. Most had long been empty, but a few held grain safeguarded by our grandparents. Perhaps these were remnants of the Hirsche Brei (“millet porridge” in Hessian) that Dad remembered eating with honey as a boiled wheat breakfast mush in Depression days. I learned later that usu Leut (“our people”) had brought ancient landrace grain seed from Russia’s Volga region and the Ukraine, varieties named for colors of kernels and glumes like Russian “Turkey” Red and Odessa White wheats, Purple Egyptian Hulless barley, and Green Russian oats. Perhaps the cellar had also served as Grandpa’s seed vault.  

Feature Article in The Whitman County Gazette

Palouse Heritage was privileged to be featured in the latest issue of the Whitman County Gazette:  http://www.wcgazette.com/

If the article is no longer available on their website, you can read the full excerpt here:

Return to Palouse Colony Farm

By Kara McMurray Gazette Reporter

Palouse Colony Farm circa 1910

Richard Scheuerman grew up about two miles from a farm known as the “Palouse Colony,” a farm between Endicott and St. John that was settled by German immigrants from Russia in the 1880s. “It was kind of a legendary place as a boy growing up,” said Scheuerman. Scheuerman said he was always interested in knowing more about the people there. “I enjoyed talking to older people. Even as a boy, I started visiting with elders of my grandfather’s generation who lived there,” he recalled. “It was all just very fascinating.” Scheuerman found himself learning about the “Old World agrarian methods” these farmers brought with them. It was a history he became hooked on. A recent business endeavor has brought Scheuerman to re-establish the Palouse Colony and its Old World farming methods as Palouse Heritage. “An opportunity came for us to acquire the property about two years ago,” said Scheuerman. “I have always kept interested in researching about the Palouse country. It was a special opportunity I didn’t want to pass up.”

Richard’s wife Lois and his brother Don Scheuerman are also part of restoring the Palouse Colony Farm, as is Rod Ochs. The Scheuermans and Ochs are all descendants of families who once lived at the farm. Richard said those involved in helping to restore grain varieties have been Alex McGregor, the McGregor Company and Andrew Wolfe, his nephew. Additionally, farmers Joe Delong of St. John, Tom Schierman of Lancaster and Chuck Jordan of Winona have helped. Richard called the effort so far “a learning experience.” “We’re always finding new things,” he commented. “It’s been a wonderful adventure just learning about this. It’s kind of all coming together.”

Richard told of how the German immigrants brought grains with them from Russia, including Turkey Red, a form of hard red winter wheat. Prior to the introduction of Turkey Red, soft white wheats were mostly used in bread production in the Pacific Northwest. “Until immigrants came from Russia, people made bread out of the soft winter wheats,” said Richard. “The Turkey Red revolutionized this. Virtually all breads today are made from hard red wheats.” Richard called the flavor of the grains now being grown again at the Palouse Colony “very distinct.” “The flavor is incredible,” he said. “We’re calling it ‘flavorful authenticity.’” Bringing back different grain varieties has been an experience right out of history, Richard said. “None of these have been grown for probably a century,” he said. “We’re seeing this unfold as living history, and friends are bringing out old recipes that were handed down.” Richard said they are not seeking to replace “modern hybrid” grains, but said there is a place for both. “Modern hybrids produce higher-yielding crops,” he said. “There’s a place for both worlds with markets internationally and with distinct flavor grains.”

Richard said that Don is also working on brews. “Don has been interested in the malting grains. He’s working with some craft malters and brewers,” said Richard. The brews are not quite ready, though. “The malt grain is being used in Spokane to create craft brews,” said Richard. “We’re trying to decide if we are ready to scale it up to production. It certainly tastes wonderful.” There are 40 acres on the property that are being farmed now. Richard said the property was also recently designated as a state historical site. The flours Palouse Heritage is developing will be available in December, and the availability of the brews will be announced at a later date. To learn more about what Palouse Heritage is doing and the history of the Palouse Colony, go to www.palouseheritage.com.

Article courtesy of The Whitman County Gazette

A Special Visit from America's Pancake Queen

Recent days have witnessed a number of special events related to Palouse Colony Farm and regional heritage. New York culinary writer Amy Halloran, author of The New Bread Basket: Redefining Our Daily Loaf (Chelsea Green, 2015), was our guest at the farm last month. Popularly known as “America’s Pancake Queen,” Amy says she has wanted to devote her life to the fine art of pancake-making since grade school, and has a picture of the note she wrote to her fourth grade teacher to prove it.

Amy Halloran & Friends with “Founding Farmer” Pancakes, Endicott Food Center

Amy has worked with us since last year to document authentic recipes of breads and pancakes from America’s colonial and pioneer era, and formulated an authentic “thirded” blend of heritage English White Lammas wheat, Yellow Dent corn, and Scots Bere barley flours based on recipes used by “Founding Farmers” George and Mary Washington at Mt. Vernon. Amy hosted a group of Palouse Colony Farm friends for a pancake breakfast at Jenny Meyer’s Endicott Food Center, and presented with Richard on regional food networks at Spokane’s Farm & Food Expo on November 5. Culinary writer Samuel Fromartz writes of The New Bread Basket: “If you’re curious about the future of bread, beer, or even the locavore movement itself, this is the place to start.”

You can read more about Amy's visit on her blog here.

2016 Spokane Food and Farm Expo

Palouse Heritage had the opportunity to present at the 2016 Food & Farm Expo in Spokane. Our co-founders, Richard and Don Scheuerman, participated in the event along with several of our friends and partners who have joined us in the effort to raise awareness about the benefits of landrace grains. 

Richard taught one of the classes at the event, titled:

Heritage and Landrace Grains:  Restoring the soil, our health and flavor with heritage and Landrace Grains

You can watch his lecture below. The accompanying PowerPoint slide deck is available by clicking here.