Well I'll be darned.

All my life I have been striving for highest protein spring wheat. Some years they will pay up to 3.00 premium on high protein wheat. Sent a load up to flour mill in New Prague, Mn. this a.m. Trucker called back and said it got rejected because protein is to high. I said you mean it is to low. No, you heard me right, it is to high. Unbelievable. I have had my grain buyer calling around for 2 hours trying to find a place to unload this wheat. No luck. It looks like he is going to have to bring it back and put it back in the bin. As a last ditch usually we can sell to a river terminal but with the Mississippi so high they can't send the barges down river so the terminals are all full. I am really in a bind here. C.H.S. who I sold the wheat to said they will let me buy out of my contract but that is going to cost me about $1400 and now I am going to have to pay the trucker for the back haul of 70 miles. $$$ Really discourages me from planting wheat. But I have worked so hard over the years to build a solid market for the straw I bale and sell to hobbiest and horse farmers that I hate to give that up. Oh well, I will keep you informed as to how this pans out.

I'm surprised that the mill wasn't just willing to blend it with lower protein wheat to achieve a certain level.

Kansas State University has a laboratory that does testing for the milling and baking properties for varieties of wheat. I enjoy reading the descriptions of wheat varieties. Some varieties really never reach popularity because they don't possess good M&B.

Did your wheat have some shriveling to it? Often as wheat shrivels from very hot windy weather it seems to drive up the protein content.

And we Iowa farmers whine about a small amount of FM dockage on our corn and beans. We don't grow food crops so we have it pretty darned good.

I never realized wheat buyers were so picky until I was involved with harvesting it. After my load was probed at the elevator I was sometimes sent away to another dealer because of protein content. Made for quite a delay in getting back to the field, and the temperature was only 105 and the truck was not air conditioned. One of the guys we cut for only wanted low protein wheat because he sold it to a place that made it into glue. I guess the high protein stuff doen't make good glue.

Another customer never bought new seed so his wheat had lost it's resistance to smut. The elevator manager chewed on me and tried to make me look like an evil person because he had to find a separate bin for it. He even spit out his tobacco plug before he started in on me. Smutty wheat can't be used for food because it has a fishy smell.

That happened to me once and like you I always heard the low protein comments then finally had a year when everything was right and not only no premium but discounted price because it was to high.
Last time I raised wheat as I figured the elevator was messing with me. They can and do blend wheat if it works to their benefit.

Well then maybe grind it up into feed or flour and start baking ? Cut out the middle men.

At 3.50 a loaf I am sure there is money to be made. If a person had time to play with it "Farmers Market" might be a good idea. I know a fellow that grows wheat and grinds it for flour for sale. He has done it for quite a while but I never asked him how it paid off.

I have grown wheat all my life. Have never had protein too high. I have had wheat rejected from too low a test weight (shriveled kernels. Was associated with an elevator for 30 years. AlI most all will blend. I think there is more to this story.