Until recently, there were some products locavores in the Pioneer Valley just couldn’t buy. We had no trouble finding fresh local vegetables, at least during the harvest season. We could purchase some local meat and poultry. Grains were a different matter.

Now we have local choices for grains and beans ... and Pioneer Valley Heritage Grains, a wintertime CSA devoted to these staples.

Two decades ago, Ben Lester of Shutesbury was running a bakery in Amherst. He was a proponent of local food but could find very little local or ancient wheat to use in his baked goods, he told me last week. Both his father and his grandfather had been heirloom grain lovers so this saddened him.

In 2007 and 2008, a global food crisis forced him to get creative. Both Russia and China experienced wheat shortages. Some of Lester’s bills at the bakery tripled overnight.

He realized that having local sources for wheat “was really not just a moral thing to achieve here but also an economic and food-security thing,” he recalled.

“I wondered, ‘Why isn’t there a grain CSA?’ Not just about wheat but about our staple foods.”

He launched the Pioneer Valley Heritage Grains CSA ... and 100 people signed up. More followed.

“As we developed our program, a lot of growers in the region began to grow their own grains,” he explained.

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Allan Zuchowski of Lazy Acres Farm came to Lester and said, “What do you want me to grow?” Zuchowski still grows wheat, rye, and corn for Lester.

Although Lester started out with the intent of growing grains himself for his Heritage Grains CSA, he soon switched over to marketing and distributing the products and letting others do the actual growing. Over the years, he has expanded the products offered.

He met Erik Andrus, a baker and farmer from Vergennes, Vermont, in 2009 at a local-grain conference. Andrus had trouble growing wheat because his soil was too wet. He came up with the idea of trying rice instead, Lester recalled.

When I told Lester that I couldn’t imagine rice, generally a warm-weather crop, growing in Vermont, he informed me that rice, like many crops, has been adapted to various climates and growing conditions.

Erik Andrus studied traditional rice-growing methods in Hokkaido, Japan, where the climate is cold in winter. He now supplies Lester with Japanese-style rice each year.

In addition to wheat and rice, CSA members can purchase a variety of beans, as well as oats and ancient grains, including Ben Lester’s favorite grain, einkorn wheat. Einkorn has been grown for 10,000 years. Lester called it “the most ancient cultivated wheat.”

Lester explained to me that his CSA is unique in that it is “100-percent customizable.” Would-be consumers need to sign up by mid-December on the CSA’s website, localgrain.org.

Lester and his partner, Anna Laird Barto, will then send out links to enable members to customize their shares. The members can specify different quantities of various products. They can also order their grains ground or whole and can choose a distribution location from which to pick up their order.

The closest location to us in Franklin County is the Methodist Church in Hadley. Distribution day there is scheduled for Feb. 15.

People pick up their entire share of products at once. A half share amounts to 30 to 40 pounds of various grains and beans; a whole share doubles that.

Lester suggests storing the products in mason jars with silica packs to avoid attracting food moths. Kept thus, most of the grains last for months and months.

I asked Ben Lester as a baker to tell me the difference between his grains and mass-marketed products like King Arthur Flour, which I generally use for baking.

“They differ in a whole number of ways,” he noted. “For one thing, all of our stuff is organic. The other way is that all of our stuff comes from genuinely small family farms. Not only do you know where it comes from, but you can go visit the farm.

“Generally, the quality’s higher. The small-scale farms are able to put more attention into the product. Small family farmers are really crafters ... The price is very competitive, and the value is relatively very high.”

He reminded me that buying local goods also has an environmental and a personal impact. “When you cook local and you engage with your community and the land and the people, the meaning goes up,” he asserted.

For more information on the Pioneer Valley Heritage Grains CSA, visit localgrain.org. Meanwhile, here are a couple of recipes Ben Lester and Anna Laird Barto prepared recently in a cooking demonstration at Just Roots in Greenfield. They served their pita bread and hummus with tzatziki and a light salad.

Note that the “merlot” hummus gets its color and flavor from red beans, not wine.

Ancient Einkorn Wheat Pita Bread

Ingredients:

1 pound, 5 ounces einkorn flour (or other wheat flour); this comes to about 5 cups

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

2 cups water

Instructions:

Combine the flour, the salt, and the yeast. With a spoon, mix the water and the dry ingredients into a dough.

Allow the dough to rise at least 30 percent in volume. After the initial rise, limit further rising by refrigerating the dough. The dough will keep for up to a week in the refrigerator (covered).

Scoop out 1/3 to 1 cup of dough, depending on how thick you want your pita bread. On a well floured board, pat thick pita breads out with the palm of your (floured) hand. For smaller breads, use a floured rolling pin.

Bake the pitas on a hot griddle or a charcoal grill for 1 to 2 minutes per side. Ben Lester also occasionally bakes them in a 500-degree oven for 5 to 7 minutes. Serves 8 to 10.

Red Merlot Bean Hummus

Ingredients:

1 pound red merlot beans

1/4 cup tahini

1/8 cup garlic cloves

2 tablespoons olive oil

the juice of 1 medium lemon

1/8 teaspoon cumin (optional)

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions:

Soak the beans overnight or in hot water for 1 to 2 hours. Cook them until they are soft; then drain them and allow them to cool.

Place all the ingredients in a food processor. Process until the mixture is completely smooth.

Transfer the hummus to a serving bowl. For extra color and flavor, sprinkle the top with such flavorings as chili powder, thyme, sumac, sesame seeds, olive oil, and turmeric.

Serves 10 to 12 as an appetizer.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.