Heritage Winter Wheat Maris Wigeon
This is a great wheat for the homestead. It has exceptionally good flavor, with excellent baking quality. It has no awns (the barbed "whiskers" on heads of grain) so handling is much easier. And it is one of the few remaining tall wheats available. These traditional wheats are not dwarfed like modern wheat. Maris Wigeon has a big vigorous root system that can find its own nutrients instead of having to be spoon-fed like dwarfed post-WWII wheats. The tall plants shade out weeds, a major plus for organic growers. (Dwarfed wheat was bred with herbicides in mind.) And the abundant straw is a big contributor to the homestead too--as mulch, as bedding for livestock, or as all-important carbon for composting. Heads bend over as they ripen, to shed fall rains. The straw is used in England for thatching buildings.