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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] as if farming weren't hard enough

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  • From: Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] as if farming weren't hard enough
  • Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 14:36:25 -0500

Bill Thanks for the link to the cleaner.

We farm about 300 acres and 2009 was the first year we did a chemical free and gmo free field corn plot specifically for food.  We've been grinding and sifting by hand.

This year is more of the same.  Two acre producing about 35 to 60 bushels (2000 to 4000 pounds of corn) is plenty enough to meet our current demand.  We are making a fine corn meal and a coarse corn meal and the remaining meal after sifting gets sold as chicken scratch.  We are currently selling around 3.50, 2.50, and .50 a pound respectively.

This year as we expand our potatoes and rotate we are planting soup beans.  We harvest these with an old F2 gleaner.  This fall is our first wheat crop.  Soft Red winter.  A local baker is asking me if I can do Turkey Wheat which is having a come back in North Carolina from what I hear.  Its on the Ark of Tatse Slow Food list now.

If you already grow corn and beans and can build a market, processing is the way to go.   Corn, even with a non-GMO premium is selling for right around 4.50/bu.  Processing it and selling it the way I do grosses about 150.00/bu.  Locally if you have 100% organic there are buyers for about 8.40/bu.  I have yet to find a reliable seed source for certified organic corn that is reliably sweet enough for corn bread type meal.  Not that it matters.  No spray and no-GMO and locally produced is just as good as anything certified organic at this point of the game.

Right now my biggest problems are drying and storing anything more than a tone of grain to be used for food.  Investing in an infrastructure to handle that is rough.  For corn decent cleaner, mill, and sifter and the handling infrastructure for it will run you at least 6 to 9 thousand.  When you start doing wheat then you need a huller.  If you want to guarantee you have gluten free you should also have a second mill and sifter.  Plus all the extra screens and storage.

I'd like to run two of these systems seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs_Tdi9rCB8&feature=player_embedded

I've found the sifter, which was the most difficult item to find here: http://www.meadowsmills.com/eccentri.htm

Meadows makes a wide range of stone mills,  hammer mills, and bur mills as well as other processing equipment.

I've also found probably the singel best source for rebuilt seed cleaners and hullers out in Illinois. http://www.commoditytraders.biz/index.html

Its a tough nut to crack.  You certainly can't grow them ALL.  I could grow at least 8 grains that I could sell wholesale and mill with both a wholesale and retail demand for just about all of them.  The big thing is trying to get a nice hard red that can be grown in Southwestern Ohio.  That's tough...

Anyone growing grains though and lives close enough to me that I can pick up I may be interested in the future and more than happy to pay a premium.  There is a huge future in specialty grains and their processing.

••••

As to the problems with grains and things like rust...this becomes more and more of a problem the less diverse the number of grains we are growing.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106



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