This is a short transcript from a YouTube video about Himalayan tartary buckwheat (uploaded by Jeffrey Bland, PhD). Speakers include farmers, a miller, and soil experts who describe discovering and scaling tartary buckwheat on organic acreage, differences in plant morphology and seed appearance compared with common buckwheat, trials with fungal/soil inoculants to influence yield and nutrient profile, milling behavior and distinct flour uses (pies, sauces, pancakes), and a framing that links soil health, food quality, and human health.
Chapters
We are not treating tartery buckwheat as a commodity. We care about a host of particular compounds that it has, and we also care about the way it's farmed.
I have my PhD from Cornell in the horticulture field, but I do a lot of work with soil science. Everybody talks about soil health, and so from a soil health perspective, organic matter is the basis of what nutrients come from. We are increasingly knowing what strains of bacteria or fungus would help the soil. And so we add that in when we plant a crop with the hopes that that flourishes and ends up being a large part of the microbiome that's there.
The soil is an ecosystem in and of itself, and that can help to fight climate change. But there's also connections to then the quality of food that's being produced, which then connects to human health. So a lot of people are starting to draw those conclusions and make those connections, like, oh, right, the health of our soil and our planet is connected to our health.
I always had an interest in buckwheat. It's a small crop in the area. Our few attempts to grow it on a field scale had always been unsuccessful. So I was looking for a variety that would do better. And among the seed samples that I tried were some that were mislabeled, and they were tartery buckwheat rather than common buckwheat. I recognized them and decided to grow them anyway, and they did well. So from 50 seeds, the next year, we grew a bit more and a bit more.
I farm 1300 acres of certified organic field crops in Newfield. I love unique crops. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love growing wheat. I love growing corn. They're all really fun. But to have the opportunity to grow something as unique as tartery buckwheat, for me is thrilling. The difference between Himalayan tartery buckwheat and common buckwheat, which is the buckwheat I've been growing for about 25 years. The first thing I noticed about it was it doesn't branch as much as common buckwheat. The leaves are a little bit smaller and the flowers are very, very different. The common buckwheat puts out a huge white flower, and the Himalayan tartery buckwheat puts out a very small yellow green flower. Then once they all start flowering, the field takes on this really beautiful yellow green tinge.
Himalayan tartery buckwheat. It looks a lot different.
The seed itself looks different.
The seed itself looks different. The flower, of course, looks different because it's Self pollinating.
This is our first year, so we've seen the seed and we've seen the plant in the ground, and we can't wait to harvest it and see it in a bin, use it, and start to learn more about the buckwheat.
We're all learning as much as we can about tartery buckwheat. And basically we're trying a fish fungal inoculant. We're trying to see what effect that has on both the yield, particularly the nutrients that we're interested in for health benefits, as well as the nutrients that are in the plants.
We are a small organic flour mill, and we've been working for about 12 years now. One of the things I like about milling is understanding that feedback loop between what the farmer's doing in the field and literally, you know, what shows up in your hand, what you run through the machine, what you fill the bag with. We're doing smaller batches. We're customizing the way we adjust the mill. The biggest thing we noticed when we started milling the tartary buckwheat was how distinct it is from regular buckwheat. Just like when you look at the difference between regular wheat, modern wheat and Einkorn, which is an ancient relative of wheat, you know, they look totally different. They mill up totally different. So it was the same with regular buckwheat and tartery buckwheat. You could see just from looking at the kernels, you know, it has different genetics, it has a different shape. When you run it through the mill, the hulls come off in a different configuration, and you could sort of tell there was a different nutritional profile from the beginning.
Tartery buckwheat has really become our workhorse flour. I use it for all my pie crusts. I use it as a thickener for any sauces, even the lightest sauce. If I want to put a light, light horseradish sauce on a salmon fillet, I do it with a tartery buckwheat because it just has a little depth of flavor, but it won't hide anything. For a cook like me who doesn't use recipes, it's a really fun product because you can just keep it by the side of the stove and use it all the time.
We eat a lot of pancakes here, and they're fast and it's easy, and it's a pretty quick meal when Kelvin walks in from the barn and we need to eat something nutrient dense. And I'm pretty confident that's going to be a good solution to hungry tummies.
Everyone has been supportive. People have come to visit and they all use it and experiment with it. And some of them are grand cooks, and we're very happy that they participate in that way.
Food is medicine, right? That's one of the principles behind it. And that it's worth paying more attention to what you eat. It's worth investing time and money in eating good food because it's directly related to your health.
