2017: What are we going to do with our spelt grain?

who is going to do this?

Wendy has done some excellent research.
However, when I read in these posts of cooperative members being _ 'more than happy to work with the OurField team to develop a brand and package' _ , what is not clear, is who ARE "the OurField Team"?

For example,

• John is the farmer, and will, I think, cease to be a cooperative member when the new members take up his stake. I think I can speak for him in saying he may not have time to lead on branding, packaging and distribution to various intermediaries.
• I am not a member of the cooperative at all; so, although I can send 5 Kg. in January (I am away presently) this is hardly a sustainable progression..

All this takes us back to the discussion on the future organisation of the co-operative, and how to manage it.

Great to hear that Sharpham Park have a dehuller! I think @abiaspen is in touch with them about this. @abiaspen if Sharpham ask for a sample also maybe we could send them enough so they could also re-test the grain and see if that low hagberg number is true of the grain with hull remaining on it as well?

Just to update you all. Sharpham Park came back saying they could not help as that Hagberg number is way too low and also they only deal with organic grain.

Hi everyone. I have to admit I am feeling a little confused about what we are doing now. It seems that we have limited options on selling the grain and need a new vote to reconsider what to do with it now we have a lower grade than hoped. We also have limited organising support and need to consider next year. We know the grain can be stored for a little while but we must find an outlet for it soon and have a responsibility to do so. Can I suggest we make this as simple as possible: over Dec/Jan vote on what to do with the grain now we know more, then vote on who wants to continue coupled with how much people who continue are prepared to put in from both organising and funding. If not enough people want to continue and support the organising part and not enough new people want to join then we need to finalise the current year. If I decided not to continue next year I am very happy to leave any balance I have left to the project.

Thanks for these thoughts @christinelewis very clear and I agree that we need to have 2 votes fairly shortly. Working with @grahamehunter to get this sorted

A bit confused by everything going on and all the options.

With a limited capacity in the 'organising group' to move things forward I'm wondering how the future looks for OurField.

The word co-operative has been thrown around and I'm thinking we should work on a proposal or some proposals for how things may be organised next year. I'd be happy to work with others towards this end - if anyone is interested in forming some ideas to bring to the group?

Back to our spelt - somewhat selfishly I am liking the sound of the option of pushing out the grain via Hodmendods that @tamsynforsyth has brought forward as I would be interested in having a fair bit of the grain to eat myself. Its an option that currently looks somewhat viable and, especially if the grain is no good for baking, avoids having to sell for animal feed if However if Hodmendods will take all the grain, package and distribute it for us, along side their own products - it could be an option that possibly wouldn't take loads of work. I wonder the finer details - what cost would be incurred, estimates of the amount of time it would take to sell - it feels like a lot, of a quite specialist product, with I'm guessing, somewhat limited demand to sell in retail packs.

I spoke to Nigel Moon again from Whissendine Mill, who has been very helpful and is happy to offer advice. He mills spelt that a biodynamic farmer grows for him.

He said the best way hes found to reliably test a grains suitability for baking is to actually bake a loaf. If it collapses then you know its not going to come to much. I wonder if we could somehow pull this together? Getting a small sample, somehow dehulling & milling (I guess as small amount could be ultra low tech - somehow beating and grinding??) and an experienced baker trying to bake a loaf.

He made the suggestion that any sample we take should be representative. If the grain is in a pile - a number of samples should be taken from various places over the pile, mixed, then all, or part, of this mixture sent for testing.

He's had someone dehull small amounts of spelt with a bamford plate mill, with the plates set with a wide gap- it was slow, but if we can find someone with one, it would be a way to get a small sample dehulled.

I also spoke to the grower about dehulling - the place he gets his done only processes organic - he suggested we spoke to Dave Hill - who Wendy has already contacted.

@darren4 we do actually have a small amount of the grain milled as E5 milled the 2kg or so of grain we gave them. They had to make it into plain spelt flour. So I have one bag of our flour that someone could try and bake into a loaf. I could ask Luke (head baker at E5) or I know Grahame was also interested in trying it out. The only issue with this is that it's definitely not a representative sample because it was the grain that was sieved out without any hull on it. So I still think there is value in getting a more representative sample dehulled - potentially using a bamford plate mill as you suggest, and then have it tested again. Who can liaise with @johncherry to help make this happen?
For me I don't feel I could contribute more time to getting the spelt out there through Hodmedods channels...however if before the vote you were able to find a committed few people who would make this happened @darren4 then I would definitely be excited for this option too. I think we will have the vote pretty soon!
In terms of the 'organising group'. As you can probably tell the group has mainly dropped away already, so definitely for next year if we want to go ahead we need to find a way to make this happen from within the co-investors group, or set aside a role and some of our investment to pay the right person for it (anyway we can discuss this further in the moving forward thread @grahamehunter created). :)

@johnanthonyallan very sorry I just deleted your comment about you being happy to create an organising group within the co-investor group. Apologies, didn't mean to do that, thought I was deleting a comment I had started to write!

@grahamehunter @abbyrose
Have been quite out of the loop with getting our farm site together but time is starting to be a bit more open and if we're able to outline some roles that need filling perhaps this is a good place to start and the collective can look at what they can and can't commit, look at skills within the group that can be utilised etc? I think it's difficult to move forward without knowing where we all stand and where the project stands. I'd be happy to get more involved and play my part better but wouldn't know where to start RE whats being done. What I could offer at the top of my head that may help is some project management, techy stuff (web design, software integrations and designing process flows and tech infrastructure that might help us work a bit clearer and streamlined).

Maybe it's worth while trying to having an online meeting like an agm (we're probably around that time) or document outlining where everything stands at the very least or ideally getting the collective together so we can all get up to speed on whats going on and review where we go going forward with look toward putting a strategy in place. I'm attempting to get up to speed - which I feel Loomio is quite a difficult resource to do that on (could be linked to my issues around reading in this kind of format but I struggle with it, but something to consider I think)

@darren4 @sineadfenton @johnanthonyallan @christinelewis please see announcement here which answers some of your questions: https://www.loomio.org/d/69UaW2QX/important-announcement-organisers-role-after-jan-31st-2018

@sineadfenton thanks for your thoughts on this! and thanks for coming forward offering your support :). It may be that you or @darren4 would be interested in the co-investor role that is soon to be shared.