Ian Congdon and Courtney Young run Woodstock Flour, a farm in Berrigan, New South Wales where they produce stoneground, wholegrain flour. They took a break from sowing their autumn crops to tell us about the grains they’re growing and the milling they’re looking forward to.
How did you get started?
Starting the business was a bit of an experiment — we bought a small, domestic stone mill and started selling freshly milled wholegrain flour at farmers markets, having absolutely no idea what we were doing! We realised there was a demand for organic, single origin, local, wholegrain and stoneground flour so we decided to take it further. Last year we ordered a custom made New American Stone Mill to be shipped over from the States. The mill should arrive in Australia in April and it will allow us to process all of the grain grown on Woodstock and sell direct to bakers (hopefully making for a more viable farm business model than the alternate commodity system).
What do you grow?
We grow Spitfire wheat, Rosella wheat, rye, oats, spelt and Khorasan. The Spitfire and Rosella are both fairly modern, high yielding varieties. This year we’re going to trial some heritage grains that we sourced from the Gene Bank, including some emmers, einkorns, and Red Fife, Sonora, Federation, Ford and Nabawa wheats.
What is the difference between the different types of grains?
The Spitfire is typically a hard, white bread wheat and the Rosella is a medium soft noodle wheat, which used to be favoured as a biscuit wheat in the 80s. We prefer to bake sourdough bread with the Rosella, employing Chad Robertson’s long ferment method. Bob has been growing the same rye grain for more than 20 years, which he sourced from one of the first organic farmers in the area. We like to think of the rye as a landrace variety that’s well suited to organic production on our farm and tastes like Woodstock. The spelt and Khorasan are new to Woodstock. We’re yet to bake with the spelt but the Khorasan is a delicious, low protein grain that yielded really well for a heritage variety. It’s a lot different to the patented Kamut, but we think it has so much potential for all sorts of baking if it’s in the right hands.
What has response been like?
There aren’t many farm-based flour millers around, let alone small-scale stoneground flour millers, so I think most people have been interested in what we do because it provides that farm-to-table connection. The local food movement has for a long time ignored grains but now there’s a growing interest in understanding where grain comes from, how it was produced and how it was milled.
Tell us about harvesting?
We use a PTO harvester that is powered by our tractor to mechanically cut the heads off, thresh out and separate the grain. Once the harvester’s bin is full we transfer the grain into our old truck and take it back to our silos. The process of actually harvesting the grain is very satisfying but the cleaning involved is painful. Every time we shift from one crop to another we have to thoroughly clean out the harvester, truck, augers and silos. This is a very hot, dusty and itchy job.
Do you sell grains whole or milled?
With our new mill, we plan on selling fresh, wholegrain, stoneground flour. We understand that bakers use lots of refined white flour, but we’re noticing an increasing interest in wholegrain flours, which are more flavoursome and nutritious, and they work really well in naturally leavened breads, particularly when freshly milled. We’re hoping that Australian bakers are going to be using more wholegrain flours in the future, and even transition to using only wholegrain flours.
While we’re open to sifting our flour if our customers really want it, we’re hesitant because sifting is another time and energy consuming process, resulting in a waste product (the bran). There’s also no way we could sell high extraction flour at a competitive price. There’s a bit of a misconception around small-scale producers—we’re not cutting out the middleman; we’re taking on the role of the middleman. We can’t sell a cheaper product than the ‘big guys’ as our overheads are still significant and we’re trying to provide an environmental service by regenerating Woodstock our land. We want to grow grain without ploughing and we want to grow a wider variety of crops that our bakers and our soil will appreciate.
Who do you sell to?
We sell to our immediate community at the moment but with the new mill we hope to sell to bakeries in Melbourne and across our region. We’ll aim to stick within a 300-kilometre radius of our farm. Ideally, we want to supply to bakers who produce beautiful, naturally leavened goods, who are keen to experiment, who care about where their ingredients come from, and with whom we can establish a solid relationship. We eventually want to establish a Community Supported Agriculture model where our bakers would subscribe to a year’s worth of flour.
What does a day at the farm entail?
At the moment we’re getting ready to sow this year’s crops. We’ve also ploughed a couple of paddocks and grazed and mulched the other paddocks in preparation for direct drilling seed into.
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