All in the family: Seven-year-old Parker seems to be signaling, “This is ours.” And it is.
Her mom and dad, Ryan and Heather Thompson, have been growing wheat on the family farm—a century farm east of Moro, Oregon—since 2007. Ryan’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather all farmed the land before him.
That’s a lot of bread: The family, served by Northern Wasco PUD, harvests about 2,600 acres a year of soft white winter wheat. This is enough wheat per year to yield more than 3 million loaves of bread.
Hungry for more about wheat?
Consider these wheat facts from the National Association of Wheat Growers:
Wheat is grown in 42 states.
Wheat—part of the grass family—produces a dry, one-seeded fruit known as a kernel.
One bushel of wheat contains 1 million individual kernels.
Wheat is used for white bread, pastries, pasta and pizza, and has been the principal cereal crop since the 18th century.
A bushel of wheat makes about 42 pounds of pasta, which is about 210 servings
of spaghetti.