This week has kind of gotten away from us, in terms of getting out of control busy, but we still managed to push ahead on one project that has been in the works for the last year.
We got the grain mill set up on the porch at the farm. This is not an ideal location, since it has to be taken down between uses (a bit of a chore) so that it does not get wet. Ideally it would be indoors, but there is currently no room in the kitchen so this will have to do for now.
The instructions said to run about 10 kg of material through it before processing any flour for human consumption, to remove any residue leftover from manufacturing.
Fortunately, we have a bucket of 70+ year old feed corn that Jerry gave us, and we ground that up into meal for the chickens.
Grinding into a course meal consistency, it runs very easily and smoothly, easily enough for the kids to turn it.
We pulled the bucket of wheat berries out of the shop (and took the time to thresh and clean the dry beans as well).
“Pretty beans!”
Scoop up some wheat berries…
Dump them in the hopper…
Set the minions to work.
Also, don’t let the baby play in the wheat berries. She discovered a shortcut…
Instead of putting them through the grinder where they get squished and ruined, and take a lot of effort, just put them right into the flour bucket!
Took a few minutes and an extra-fine seed cleaning screen to get that sorted back out again, but then we were back in business.
Who needs a gym membership, when you can just grind flour? The Diamont does roll pretty smoothly, and it grinds to a very fine flour consistency with just one pass, but the finer the grind, the harder it is to turn. At its tightest setting only Daddy can keep it turning for any length of time. So far. If we keep this up, grinding a little every week, Evie and Ellie will also have massive arms full of functional muscle, and then they too will be able to grind for hours without stopping.
In about 20 minutes of grinding, this is what we produced, probably about enough for two loaves of bread. Stay tuned to see what we did with the flour next.
Little Farm in the Big City 