this is the introduction
to another terrific episode of How America Works.
But if you’re on the keto diet
or if you’re one of those people
who orders the burger without the bun,
you might wanna look at this as a disclaimer instead
because what you’re about to see
is going to make you want a long list of delicious things
you’re not allowed to have.
I’m talking about bread and pasta,
and bagels and biscuits,
and muffins and noodles,
and cereal and cereal bars and beer.
I’m talking about wheat,
the critical grain that is in 99% of every single thing
that’s good and delicious,
like this piece of chocolate chip almond cake,
which has been calling to me all day
and to which I now feel entitled.
Point is, wheat’s been on the menu for over 17,000 years
and here in this country, it’s an 11 billion business.
In other words, ’keto schmeto.’
Wheat is still an essential ingredient
of How America Works.
Well, it wouldn’t be America the Beautiful
without your amber waves of grain.
And boy do we have a lot of those.
So many in fact,
that the wheat growers of our nation
will plant and harvest an area the size of Georgia
with this one crop alone.
Why so much? Well,
aside from the fact that your average American
will eat 180 pounds worth of it every year,
wheat’s also pretty useful for other things
like the glue on your stamps, the paper under your pen,
and the rubbing alcohol wherever you keep that.
But as you might expect,
the bulk of it, by far, will wind up in our pantries
as one of the many thousands of foods
made possible by wheat.
Or more often than not, wheat flour,
which is why the US relies on some 150 mills
scattered across the country
to keep that flour in steady supply.
Take Siemer Milling Company,
in eastern Indiana, for instance,
where a crew of 40 men and women work tirelessly
to turn raw kernels of wheat
into more than five different varieties of flour.
But doing that today will be no cake walk
because thanks to an unseasonable warm snap,
every farmer in the region
is harvesting their wheat crop early,
leaving the folks at Siemer to receive and process
more than a million pounds of it before closing time.
It’s the kind of quota that promises to push
both man and machinery to the max today.
And among them, millers, like Anthony Lakin.
- So the wheat comes in from the farmers
and then we’ll start breaking up the kernel
and separating it and sending it where it needs to go.
And it’s my job just to make sure
we’re making the right product,
make sure everything’s going where it needs to be.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] Here on the milling room floor,
Anthony can turn a kernel of wheat
into any number of products,
each with their own special balance
of that kernel’s three main components,
the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.
Run them all through a series of roller mills
and you’ll wind up with whole grain flour.
Get rid of the bran and the endosperm while rolling,
and you’ve got wheat germ.
Sift out the bran and germ,
and now we’re talking, white flour.
Sounds straightforward enough,
but with 23 roller mills doing all that grinding
and sorting at the same time,
Anthony must keep a watchful eye
on every stage of the process. (machine whirring)
- This is our first break roll.
The object of this roll stand
is to pretty much break open the kernels.
That’s its main job.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] And since this batch of flour
will be of the white variety,
these kernels will only get more and more refined from here,
until they take on the properties
that Anthony’s looking for.
- That right there is our bread money,
lot of good flour.
This is our first quality flour,
not that high in content of bran.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] Working in tandem,
Anthony and his colleagues
will mill about 900,000 pounds of this flour alone.
But since today’s quota also calls for another
hundred thousand pounds of whole wheat flour,
he’ll need to get that going as well.
- The whole wheat we use,
all a hundred percent of the kernel.
You can see the higher bran content.
It has more protein and that’s what...
We’re gonna be changing the roll stands
and switching stuff over to get to this flour.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] For starters,
Anthony heads to the control room to adjust some settings.
Then it’s back to the roller mills
to ensure they’re fine-tuned for whole wheat production.
- So right now, when we’re switching on to whole wheat,
you don’t add water to it,
so it’s harder to break that bran.
So what we’re trying to do,
we’re trying, we gotta tighten up.
This makes us grind a little harder,
easier to break that bran.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] But even though
Anthony makes it look like business as usual,
there’s more to this process than meets the eye.
And with five years at Siemer, he’s just about seen it all.
- When you are switching over to a different flour,
there could be plugs, so you gotta watch out for that.
You gotta watch your lines, watch your roll stands,
watch where you’re grinding.
Just make sure everything’s going where it needs to be
and try to do it pretty efficient.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] But midway through the changeover,
(machine alarm buzzing) (grains sifting)
the system pipes up with one sound
that no miller wants to hear.
- Right now, something just shut us down.
We’re gonna go check what it is.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] When pushing
to pump out record amounts of product,
the odd mechanical issue is bound to crop up,
especially on this show.
But for the more serious stuff,
Siemer relies on a team of four maintenance workers
to keep the whole mill up and running.
And few know how to do that better than Chad Wilson.
- You gotta be really good at troubleshooting.
You know you gotta work under pressure.
Obviously, if the mill’s down, we’re not producing flour,
it, you know, that affects everything.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] And wouldn’t you know it?
Chad’s already in route to a piece of machinery
that’s threatening to put production behind schedule,
a cyclone airlock motor
that’s responsible for moving product to the machine below,
but instead, is sitting idle.
- This part of the mill is shut down.
This is probably one of the most vital parts of the mill.
So we need to do this as fast as we possibly can.
So here’s the motor we’re gonna have to replace today.
Obviously, we can see the problem with the motor right there
where it’s leaking out of the seal.
We’re gonna take this cover off,
which is gonna give us access
to pull the rest of the motor off.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] On pulling the cover,
it’s just as Chad thought.
A leaky seal has taken this motor
completely out of commission,
but no time to tinker with it now.
Instead, he’ll swap in a new one
to get the mill back online,
just as soon as he and his partner, Doug,
get the old motor out of the way.
- Start up.
(upbeat music continues)
You can see on this motor,
the seal also was going on the backside.
So good thing we ended up changing the whole motor
’cause if we would’ve just changed the front seal,
there would’ve been no way to get to the back seal.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] With the old motor set aside,
all that remains is to install the new one.
- Get this thing bolted in
and we’ll have ’em fired up to verify
that everything’s working properly here.
Can you go ahead and fire that 4016, that motor up?
Put it in hand please, so we can verify it.
Everything looks good. The motors turning fine.
Should be good.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] And it’s a good thing too,
because with freshly harvested wheat
already filing in by the truckload,
Siemer’s gonna need all the help they can get.
But they’re not the only ones
racing to move some grain today.
So too, are the 250 farms
that supply this facility with raw product.
Places like Adams Farms, where proprietor, Craig Adams,
has about 200 acres worth of crop to get out of the ground
while it’s still worth top dollar.
- We are harvesting our soft red winter wheat crop.
We’ve been doing this since 1977,
and this very well, potentially,
could be our best wheat crop we’ve ever had.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] But before he can harvest
the last of his wheat,
Craig will first need to finish up a field
he started this morning,
one that still holds value in the form of straw.
(machine whirring)
- We’re harvesting straw for our own use.
And also, there was a market in the horse market
for straw for stables and landscaping
and things of that nature.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] At about four bucks per bale,
this farm will yield about $25,000 in straw alone.
And to make sure he’s getting every last penny of that,
Craig relies on what’s shockingly known as a ’baler.’
- On harvest straw, they got it in windrows.
Feeding this windrow in the bale chamber.
It’s forming a bale roughly 34 inches long
and 18 x 14 around.
It’s going up the chute,
twisting on a half coming down
into 10 bale groups.
- [Voice Over Mike Rowe] Then again,
those bales can only be made
when Craig’s equipment is running as it should.
And with so many moving parts jostling across the field,
that’s not always the case.
(censor beeping)