When we started farming, with a dream of providing freshly milled grains to Manitoba kitchens, I was thinking of field work, soil testing, crop inspections, farmers markets and connecting with customers. The middle step was pretty fuzzy in my mind. I knew that there was an in-between stage where we would need to mill the oats, but I really had no idea what that looked like. Let me tell you – it was a steep learning curve!!! Turns out that our to-do list was a whole lot of fixing machinery and re-wiring motors and installing augers and renovating buildings before we even had a single oat to share.
A few months ago I was giving a tour to a long-standing customer who has helped out with our CSA for years. She kept on repeating “People have no idea how much work this is…people just have no idea what’s involved….people have no idea….I had no idea…!!!!”. She’s probably right, and i’m entirely to blame for this misinformation. The part of my job that I emphasize and share on social media is certainly off-balance. The mill is not exactly picturesque, and when i’m covered in grain dust and fighting back tears from battling with a stuck-bolt or a timeline for getting an order out the door, my camera is usually the last thing on my mind.
When I tell people that we are a small scale mill, that what we mill in the course of a year is what a “normal” mill would process in a day, people think that my mill might be something like a sun-lit room with a roller mill attachment on a kitchen appliance. Nope. It’s a mini factory! I spend the vast majority of my time calibrating and maintaining equipment, fixing (or breaking) motors, vacuuming grain dust, and record keeping, and just a few handful of days outside and in the fields. This is the missing middle, and I hope that you enjoy getting a little glimpse into my real and oat-dusty life 🙂