We recently bought a grain mill.
We bought a Diamant, by all reviews, the Cadillac of grain mills.
It can grind beans, large and small grains, corn, even oily things like crushed nuts and sunflower seeds. It’s also supposed to last practically forever.
We certainly hope it can do all of those things, because it is not cheap. But, if it can allow us to mill all of our own flour and cornmeal, and eventually barley, rye, oats, nuts and sunflower seeds for the next twenty years, well, it will be worth it. If it survives, maybe we will pass it down as an heirloom of our house.
First thing to note about this, it’s heavy. That’s because it is cast iron.
But, as middlest girl is quick to point out, “I can still lift it!”
“Whoa! This is light!” Says the stubborn child when she lifts something that is almost-but-not-quite too heavy for her. She was able to get it on the table though. Never underestimate a determined Kraeger.
Cast iron is a wonderful substance that will last practically forever if cared for. It can break, though, if dropped on concrete or other hard surface, particularly when it is cold. It is also heavy, which means this thing has to be mounted to something solid. Ideally this would be a heavy, solid kitchen counter with a butcher block surface. Unfortunately, we don’t have one of those, so we are doing the next best thing.
We are building a mounting bracket to mount it semi-permanently to one of the poles on the front porch at the farm… or really any 4×4 or 4×6 post.
Careful scribing to get the angles right. We want this over engineered so Daddy could stand on it.
Seppi doing school. Daddy doing woodworking. Seppi hurrying so he can get done with school and help with woodworking.
Attaching the 3/8 in bolts and wing nuts that will attach the mill. God willing we will set it up and make a go at milling some flour either Saturday or on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
Little Farm in the Big City 