A West Sunbury business still uses 19th century technology to keep a once-popular food stuff in stock in the 21st century.

Mark and Matthew Zanella, owners of Zanella Milling, 111 Main St., mill buckwheat, a little-known crop that once enjoyed great popularity in colonial America but had almost vanished from the nation's tables by the 1960s.

Mark Zanella said it's a misconception that buckwheat is a grain. It's not a grass nor is it related to wheat or other grains.

It is the seed of a flowering fruit related to rhubarb and sorrel.

“Buckwheat originated in the Far East as an Asian crop,” Zanella said.

Buckwheat grows to a maximum height of three feet with white flowers and produces a triangular seed.

Zanella said buckwheat has a short growing season. It's typically planted in July and harvested four months later at the end of October. Most other grain crops have a five- or six-month growing season.

“Today it's not really common, but it used to be really common,” Zanella said.

In fact, the 1895 “Agriculture: History of Butler County” records that in 1870, the county's 5,384 farms produced 113,994 bushels of buckwheat.

Justin Brackenrich, agronomy educator with the Butler County Penn State Extension Service, said the National Agricultural Statistical Service showed that 470 bushels of buckwheat were grown in the county in 2007. There are no buckwheat crops recorded since then.

“Northwest Pennsylvania used to grow a tremendous amount,” Brackenrich said. “Nowadays, people are planting it as a cover crop.”

Cover crops are a way to keep fields from being empty after a harvest to prevent erosion.

“It's a good pollinating plant, and people plant it as food pods for wildlife. But I don't know anyone who is harvesting it,” Brackenrich said.

Cornell University, which has a buckwheat newsletter, says today buckwheat is grown mostly in regions of New England, New York state and Western Pennsylvania.

“We actually contract with a local grower to have him supply us with corn, oats, buckwheat, rye and soybeans,” Zanella said.

“It's a very fickle plant. You could say it has a personality,” he added, and that makes harvesting buckwheat difficult.

“If you wait until too long after a killing frost, the plant dries naturally and the grain will drop to the ground,” Zanella said. “If you harvest too early, it will have too much moisture.”

Consequently, there's a very narrow window for harvesting buckwheat, he added.

In a good year, the Zanellas will mill about 18 to 19 tons of buckwheat, and hold four to five tons back as seed for future crops.

Three pounds of buckwheat before milling will make about one pound of flour, so 18 tons of buckwheat seeds will yield six tons of buckwheat flour.

The Zanellas package three products in 2.5-pound bags: self-rising pancake flour, self-rising buckwheat flour and buckwheat flour.

“Buckwheat pancakes used to be a staple breakfast for people in the area,” he said. “But now, there are kids that have never had a buckwheat pancake.”

Because buckwheat produces a very dense flour that is resistant to rising, the self-rising flour and pancake flour are mixed with wheat flour and corn meal to make baking a little easier.

Zanella said baked goods made with buckwheat flour have a nutty flavor.

The buckwheat flour packaged without additives is popular with people who are trying to have a gluten-free diet. Gluten is the catch-all name for the proteins found in wheat, rye and barley. In people with celiac disease, gluten triggers an immune response that damages the lining of the small intestine.

The flours are sold at the Zanellas' store next to the mill, at the Butler Farm Market, at butcher shops and small grocery stores.

The Zanellas don't have an online presence.

He doesn't have the means to produce flour in the amounts a big grocery chain would demand.

“The machinery of my 124-year-old mill would be worn out trying to chase a dollar,” Zanella said.

The mill machinery is so old that it doesn't run well in high heat and high humidity. The moisture causes the buckwheat to grow gummy and stop up the machinery.

Zanella said the optimum conditions for milling the buckwheat is times of the year with low humidity and low temperatures.

Prime milling season is from the start of November until the end of March.

The Zanellas will make enough flour to tide the business over during the warmer months then take the machinery apart, clean it and put it away.

The Zanellas use a roller mill with two sets of metal rollers to crush the buckwheat.

It's a complicated process with the buckwheat traveling down to the roller mill, being crushed, and traveling back to the second floor where two sets of filters separate out the larger pieces. It's then milled and filtered a second and third time before being the finished product.

The byproduct of the milling, he said, “makes a really nice animal feed. It's a non-GMO feed. It's not organic but it hasn't been altered. The genetics of buckwheat are the same as you would have found them 100 years. It makes chicken or pig feed.”

The mill was built in 1897 and changed owners several times before the brothers' parents, John and Anita Zanella, bought the mill in 1983.

“My father went to the bank for a loan to buy a business,” Zanella said. “He was looking for a beer distributor.

“The bank had taken ownership of the mill and said, 'You have a farm/ag background.' My dad went ahead and bought the mill,” he said.

The flour mill had been out of operation for years and had been in pieces. It might not have opened again except for longtime employee Bill Blose who lived across the street. He noticed the activity and came over to lend his expertise in getting the machinery running again.

John Zanella's sons, Matthew and Mark, bought the mill in 2016.

“We are my parents' retirement plan. It's dependent on our success. We've got 14 years left on our payment plan,” Mark Zanella said.

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