Come with us on a journey: community supported milling

We’ve built a business around quality, around flavour, around fairness. Around taste more, eat less.

And that nourishment runs right the way through what we’re doing — from the soil, the seeds and the farmer, physiologically and psychologically, through the miller, the retailer, the distributor, and finally to the person eating — who we connect straight back to the farmer by making it really obvious where the grain has come from. The field. The year. The farmer. The variety.

I’m from a council estate. Council estate people, especially now, struggle for quality food.

My family didn’t — because my mum and dad were growers, and we had three allotments out the back of our little council house. I was in there knee-deep in dirt, learning how to grow runner beans, how to prune an apple tree, how to grow gooseberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons. The vegetables we needed on our plate — juxtaposed, yes, with a Findus crispy pancake, or a pizza made of shortcrust pastry with corned beef on it. Odd. But on the whole, we ate properly.

Then I spent seventeen years in media, selling advertising to huge corporations, eating in the best restaurants in London — learning what flavour was, what presentation was, what money bought you. And I came full circle: none of that produce, none of that extravagant presentation, ever bettered the flavour of the allotment.

We know that. We know that. But most working class people don’t have access to it — economically or geographically.

So when I say DON’T EAT SHIT, I’m not trying to ruffle feathers. I’m not saying it aggressively. I’m saying everything above in a really short sentence — an honest one — that people from my estate can understand.

And here’s where it’s going. We’re building towards something farm-facing: grain in the back end, a plate of pasta out the front. A plate that costs us a pound or two to put on the table, sold at six to eight pounds a meal. Where the same pasta that sits in fancy shops in fancy bags — bought by people who can afford to help carry the food system, and thank you, truly — can be bought at a wholesale price. Fair for both sides. A kilo of proper pasta at a price that means people can feed their kids well, without scrabbling round food banks, embarrassed, asking for food.

That’s not what I want. That’s not what a food system should be. We pay everybody and treat everybody with the respect we want for ourselves.

So — DON’T EAT SHIT might ruffle some feathers. I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m not going to stop saying it, and I’m not going to stop printing it.

I want MILLS in every community, owned by the community and the people who work there. Community supported milling. Community supported wheat projects — making pasta, noodles, biscuits, crackers. High volume, full of flavour: nourishment for everybody.

FOOD IS LIBERATION.

WE PAY FARMERS WHAT THEY ASK.