From Word To Word

I have this flour mill, have had it for several years now, ever since my Grandmother Hill decided that she was too old to be grinding her own flour anymore.  She told me that it was “a very good grinder, a very good grinder, do you hear?” and she made me promise that I would never sell it or give it away, so it has been sitting in my basement, unused, for more than half a decade.

That was, of course, until I went to visit Loonsong Garden a few weekends ago and had a chance to learn a little bit about how grain is grown and about how flour is ground.  So, when I got home, I went into the basement and dug out the mill to see whether it was a stone grinder, which it is, and which is good.  I spent a little time playing with it  and then sent an email to Loonsong about getting a little whole grain for experimentation.

Yesterday, the owner of Loonsong came by my house unexpectedly, dropping some flour off for a friend of mine.  He took a look at my mill, and it turns out that my Grandmother was quite right, as she has so often been.  Not only does it use stones to grind the flour, which is good for all sorts of reasons, but it is an older model, so it is built far more solidly than anything available to the public now and is geared more slowly, so the flour does not overheat as it is being ground.  In other words, it is far too good a machine to be rusting in my basement, so I may be compelled to add flour grinding to my weekly activities.  It also means that anyone who has grain that needs to be ground, and I know that there are countless of you out there, is very welcome to come and use it, so long as I can have a slice of any bread that you bake.