Buckwheat: Food for Northern Pioneers

Buckwheat plant in bloom.

In the 1870s over in Williamstown, New Brunswick, a blue-eyed woman with her hair pulled back walked back and forth so many times from the wood stove to her family’s table that over time she wore a path in the soft, wooden floor. She was cooking pancakes for up to seven sons, one daughter, and her husband—if no guests were served. Buckwheat pancakes with molasses.

Hannah’s sixth son, Joseph Allison Emery, said he grew up on those pancakes. He was part of poor family of settlers from Northern Ireland who could not afford to eat much meat. 

Sam Everett in his orchard.

They did, however, have plenty of the three-sided grain call buckwheat. And so did their neighbors in New Brunswick, and so did other pioneering families across the border in Maine.

In the border town of Fort Fairfield, for example, Sam Everett, an English settler known for his large build and great strength, reportedly ate buckwheat pancakes with eggs or pork every morning for breakfast. He lived into his mid-80s, as did his wife, Eunice. Was a moderate diet of buckwheat part of their longevity?

George and Joseph A. Emery.

As an adult, Joseph Emery worked for a time on logging drives on the St. John River, a precarious task hopping from one floating log to another. He then went out to Colorado to visit his brother and help in the mines. Eventually he settled back in northern Maine, married twice, raised nine children, and lived into his 90s. He would tell his grandchildren about his childhood days of eating buckwheat pancakes, apples from the orchard and, as a snack, raw eggs in the hen house.

From the same plant family as rhubarb, buckwheat can be planted in late spring and harvested before the first frost as the plants mature in 8 to 10 weeks. In poor soil conditions, the grain produces a higher yield than any other grain crop in a cool, moist climate. It can even thrive amongst tree stumps from newly cleared land.

As little as two acres would feed a farming family of four for a year, and not even mice could chew through the dark brown shells. Local grist mills grounded the seeds into a flour that had more protein and higher amounts of nutrients than the slower-growing wheat.

Dad’s countertop mill.

The buckwheat seed hulls were saved from the mills and used for insulating walls in settler homes. The hulls may also have been used to stuff pillows…a practice in some parts of the world to this day.

Many northern farms, settled in the mid to late 1800s, grew more buckwheat on newly turned soil than wheat, oats, or rye. Buckwheat was more dependable for food in uncertain times when store goods were expensive or sparse and growing seasons unpredictable.

Flour and hulls.

In the more northern St. John Valley where Acadians settled decades earlier, Tartary Buckwheat was grown and ground into a light colored flour (with a mild, bitter taste) to make the famous Acadian ployes, eaten as a thin crepe or bread.

The species grown south of the St. John Valley was generally the Common Buckwheat which made a heavier, blue-gray flour that tasted a little sweeter.

After the local grist mills ceased operation in the 20th Century, the common buckwheat was seldom ground for flour but was still used as a green rotation crop for potatoes. But the memories of its flavor and hardiness remained in the minds of my parents, Fred and Iris Russell. 

Blueberry buckwheat pancakes.

One day in 1969 Dad met a salesman who sold him a countertop grist mill from Salt Lake City. Dad grew both wheat and buckwheat that year, harvested the grains, and had enough of both to grind in his new Magic Mill for wheat breads and buckwheat pancakes all the next year.

Maple syrup.

About once a month my task was to sort through a bucketful of buckwheat seeds to pick out any stray, small stones. Then Dad set up the mill in the kitchen and ground up coarse wheat for cooked cereal, fine wheat flour for Mom’s baking, and the buckwheat for pancakes. I’d sift the broken hulls out of the flour and then we’d have a meal that next morning of blueberry buckwheat pancakes with New England’s dark maple syrup.

Whenever I later drove several hundred miles to attend college, I always requested a meal of pancakes before I left. The buckwheat would keep me full and alert for the entire eight-hour trip.

Years later, I inherited the old mill from my father and found local sources of buckwheat to grind. My family didn’t eat the pancakes nearly as often as Joseph Emery did, but we ate them fairly often, with both our children sifting the flour and mixing the batter.

Ben and Amy Stanford sifting buckwheat flour.

Recently my now grown daughter requested such a meal and ate more pancakes than anyone else at the table. She had a long drive ahead of her and craved the nourishment and strength the old-fashioned meal could give.

It did not disappoint.