Dear Abby

Your message is very much appreciated. I look forward to participating. Many thanks, TonyA

Results

I have been asked to prepare some post harvest accounts, and have looked at the earlier spreadsheets, the initial forecasts, some predictions made in these pages; and will so far as possible merge that information with the actual figures which I have obtained in discussions with John and the farm book-keeper.

The accounts will therefore be

• a record of actual expenses
• combined with some national averages for input costs, and
• local typical values for specific fixed costs such cost of using the land; and
• for the income from an unsold crop, much guesswork.

Just to add a further harvest update...we've had a measure up and estimate the total harvest yield at approx. 15 tonnes of spelt off our 20 acres. We sent some of the first cut stuff off to be sampled for gluten etc and it ticked the boxes ok (Hagberg falling number of 215 for those who like an actual figure). We had to mix that with the late cut stuff (so that we had enough to fill the grain drier), so I suspect we'll end up with a lower figure, but it'll perhaps have enough gluten to raise a loaf. We haven't got a value for the crop yet, but Grahame is working on the accounts now so at least we'll know how much we need to sell it for if we're not all to end up in the poor-house...

Dear Grahame and John. Thank you warmly for the news. Much appreciated. Tony

The accounts are now out with the organisers for review..grahame

Selling the Spelt

I see that Wendy Alcock had many useful leads and ideas about this - see her post of 17th August - including this from Wrights Mill

“we would be able to turn your grain into flour, packed in 16 kg sacks and delivered in 26 pallet loads for £150 per tonne. As I mentioned it would probably be best to buy the grain from you at the market price and sell the flour back to you at this additional cost of £150 per tonne."

If every OurField member would "buy" eg 25 kg, that would account for a whole tonne. I am not a member, but would be willing to agree to buy 25Kg at £1.50 /kg if packed in small bags, as I can give them away for Christmas.

Perhaps there could be a proposal on whether members want to have some flour for their bread ..

FIELD COSTS SUMMARY

We have the final costs of the field for the year, here is the summary:

• Land rent (net of Basic Payment Scheme) 664
• Farm admin costs 200
• Agronomist time 109
• Farmer time 600
• Machinery/contractors time 1,098
• Other handling costs (store, drying etc) 210
• Seeds and sprays 2,168
• Total Farming Costs 5,048.28

(For anyone who is interested in the wider accounting and how these costs break down further @grahamehunter will publish the full accounts in a separate thread and you can ask him any questions you like about them!)

SELLING THE SPELT

We harvested 15 tns of spelt, so to break even and recover our costs we would have to sell the spelt for £336.53/tn

In the initial agreement there were 60 shares allocated, John owns 18 of them and then there are 42 co-investors. So this means if we don't sell the spelt (so worst case scenario), each shareholder gets £65.86 back. i.e make a loss of £84.14.

Members of the collective have already talked about a number of options for selling the spelt and some have the potential to still make that money back, and even to make a profit but require more risk/work from the collective. So let's start the discussion and see what's possible with our 15 tns of spelt! Really looking forward to everyone's thoughts and ideas!

Dera Abby
Very many thanks for conveying the accounts from Grahame and John. The summary is very useful indeed. We are very grateful indeed or the detailed work and effort that has gone into the accounting.
I look forward to the discussion on marketing. And hear about the next meeting/celebration. Best

Hi everyone

I think there are a lot of outlets we could contact about selling the grain or flour so I've started a google doc to allow us to record who we have already spoken to. I've added the companies I have seen mentioned but please add any more you have already spoken to or contact from now on. If we all contact 2 or 3 mills or bakeries we will cover a wide range of outlets.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_6E1zJuAC0PxursgEGdjYAppTjRDfg1ibAG41547DA/edit?usp=sharing

@john Are you able to confirm gluten levels for the combined spelt – I think this is important info to pass on to possible buyers. Also, did you manage to find out if your local farmers co-op has a spelt buyer or which mills are used by your local coop? They could be a good place to contact.

@abbyrose @annielandless The latest email said “The team has been contacting possible buyers, including Marriage’s and Dove’s who have indicated their interest.” Could you add this info to the document?

@grahamehunter Wrights mill were a good option but I will need to check if they can take only 15 tonnes, as they originally told me they would need at least 29 tonnes.

I would also buy some of the flour if it was available and I have added your suggestion to the doc - where others who are interested in this option can also add their names.

I'm sure I've missed things off the google doc so please see this as a starting document that anyone can edit and add to.

THank you for this @wendyalcock ! Great summary and we will certainly add to the Google Doc. We are going to post a summary here as well for everyone to see some of the ideas John, Grahame and the organising team have put together to kickstart the discussion with everyone.

Huge thanks for pulling this together Wendy.

Posting this on behalf of @grahamehunter and organising team:
It’s that time of the year… It’s time to decide what to do with our delicious spring spelt. In some ways this could be seen as one of the most important decisions - as it will decide who finally gets their hands on the grain, what is created (bread? biscuits? animal feed?), and how much of a profit or loss we make on our grain!

John has sent through some details about the quality of the grain and the yield - it appears that it IS high enough grade for human consumption, which is brilliant news. We are awaiting the results of a few other tests, and will let you know the results of those as soon as they come back.

So let’s start the final debate!

Some of you have already been actively researching and exploring options for who might be able to buy the spelt… Well this is your time to speak up and share your findings with the group! Thanks @wendyalcock for putting together this google doc with different options:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_6E1zJuAC0PxursgEGdjYAppTjRDfg1ibAG41547DA/edit
If you have any thoughts or ideas please do share them on the loomio feed and then add them into the doc to make sure everyone sees them!

Additionally, our team has been contacting various bakeries and millers, and brainstormed the following ideas:

1. We could do the milling ourselves - milled and bagged (where?) for a charge of £150/tonne… this could be in 20kg bags or 1kg bags - which will cost differently. Then the question is, what could we sell it for, and to whom? Grahame says you can buy spelt flour for £2/kg in Waitrose.

2. We could get in touch with bakeries that have a mill, like E5 bakery, and see if they could take some and mill it on site and do a special day selling the bread, and provide us with loaves at our Harvest Festival. This probably won’t cover all the grain, but could be a nice way for each of us to take home some of our own spelt flour and potentially sell bags of flour direct to the public. Is this something that is important to people?

3. Doves Farm (https://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/about) have got back to us offering £190 per tonne of spelt and would take it off our hands entirely.

4. We are waiting to hear a reply from Marriage’s and Gail’s Bakery.

5. what other ideas do people have???

We look forward to hearing all your thoughts and discussions.
We will consolidate all the discussions into final voting options Mon 23rd Oct.
Then the vote on what to do with the spelt will run from Wed 25th Oct - Sun 29th Oct. So please do get into action asap and encourage other members of the collective to speak up!

p.s We are just confirming a few details but we are planning the harvest festival to be on Thursday 23rd Nov in London. It will be a really great event! Please pencil that in your diaries!

What are your thoughts? @tessatricks @harryboglione @sadhbhmoore @sebastianpowell @nikitagulhane @nikireynolds @sebastianpowell @ellemcall @edna @edibleutopia @tristramstuart @jamestickell @tamsynforsyth @shyamdesai @averilglencross @catherinearend @alfredlawrie @matthewshribman @matteodv @romymiller @alexandrasexton @johnanthonyallan @lucybradley1 @andreadibiagio @emersoncsorba @christinelewis @christinelewis1 @darren4 @veronicalopesdasil1 @danielkindred @sineadfenton @tamsynforsyth @harrygreenfield1 @karlschneider @seangifford @stevenjacobs @johncherry @alfredlawrie @annielandless @stinewilhelmsen @seangifford @wendyalcock and anyone who we didn't catch in that list!

..and there is now a spreadsheet giving a little more information on costs in the accounts discussion thread.

grahame

Marketing
The discussion on marketing is very interesting. I was wanting to circulate this message on the separate accounting and marketing page but cannot this morning fathom how to do this.
Can I enquire if the offer of £190/tonne for the spelt from Dove's is still open?
£190/tonne gladdens the heart. It appears to be much higher than the £140/tonne quoted in Farmers Weekly for wheat. Can John comment? At £140/tonne for wheat farmers will have a tough year. What is the crystal ball telling us about the price of spelt over the next months. Will it fall?

I have been thinking that I would really like to have some of the spelt flour for my own use, I'm not a big baker - but as Grahame suggested at some point - I do quite like the idea of giving bags of spelt flour as Christmas presents, a great way to tell the story and spread the word, plus I could probably manage 1-2 kgs myself. Are other people interested in this idea? This would be one way of recovering some of our losses as well potentially.
For this to work we would need to decide how much each person in the collective would want to take themselves...and in order to make it work for everyone do we, as individuals, need to buy that spelt flour from the collective or what to people think about that?
Of course another question is who would mill the spelt for us? @wendyalcock I wonder if Brixton Windmill would mill a certain amount of the grain for us (just 5 tonnes say), and if yes what would that cost? Also have you heard more from Wrights Mill - would they be able to deal with 15 tonnes?

Of course if we did this with all the spelt that would be 10-12,000 kg of flour (assuming about 20-30% loss of weight in milling process - is that assumption right?), which I think is probably too much for us to sell personally. So it would make sense to sell some of the grain to someone like Doves. As you said @johnanthonyallan £190/tonne is thankfully higher than the wheat price, but @johncherry how does that compare to what you would normally expect for a more specialty (lower-yielding) grain such as spelt? I would have thought we could expect more per tonne than that, especially as it's pretty good quality spelt! Really interested to hear what others want to do with the grain.

That does sound like a very sensible approach Abby - thanks for thinking it through

Dear Abby
Very many thanks for your message. It will be good to try to add value to the spelt and be able to market higher value products. We need, however, more knowledge such as Wendy is generating and some skilled volunteer inputs. In this element of the project my only contribution would be financial either as a donation or in the purchase of spelt bread. We do not bake my our bread.

I have some questions.
1 Is there any urgency with respect to the sale of the spelt produced. Does anyone know trends in spelt prices? Is the demand for spelt grain high? If there is no pressure to take advantage of the current price we have time for a long discussion on what to do next.

2 We need to understand the nature of the "loss". In order to have a better understanding of loss we need to know something about grain prices. The diagram below provides some idea of the downward trend in INTERNATIONAL grain prices since 2012. It would be better to have a diagram for UK PRICES but I do not have such a diagram to hand. I am not sure whether the diagram will transmit in a readable format.

Producing spring wheat, like producing spelt, is only viable if farmers receive CAP payments. It would be good to have enough information to understand the challenges of market volatility and the extent to which the CAP payments mitigate the impacts of volatility.

Meanwhile we should not lose sight of the soil, water, biodiversity ecosystem issues which for most of us are key priorities. We need, for example, a discussion on weeds and glyphosate.

Thank you very much for coping with all the issues that have emerged since harvesting.
Best Tony (Allan)

The glyphosate issue and weed control

An issue on which the OurField members need to be informed is the use, regulation and the moves to discontinue the use of glyphosate during a complex international corporate take-over of Monsanto (US) by Bayer (Germany).

Professor Amir Kassam a very highly regarded scientist who has devoted decades to understanding and publishing on conservation agriculture shared some comments on glyphosate and weeds and agreed that they could be posted on the OurField website. Dr David Dent who in June very kindly collected and analysed soil samples from our 2017 field has also made some comments.

18 October 2017 at 21:20, Amir Kassam amirkassam786@googlemail.com wrote:

Dear David and TonyA,
EU will discuss the renewal of license for glyphosate on 25 October. The period under discussion now is 10 years, not 15 years, given the muddy debate about agrochemicals, GMO and industrial farming!

If farming moves to CA more rapidly, then it should be possible to adopt/innovate weed management strategies based on integrated weed management approaches. There are already organic CA farms and they use the power of all the three CA principles - no-till (letting weed seeds die in the ground), dead and live ground cover (smothering weeds in different ways and also killing weed seeds with organic acids as humification proceeds), diversified cropping (rotations and associations, including cover crops and allelopathic effects) to manage weeds. The last chapter in Edward Faulkner's book, Ploughman's Folly, is about managing weeds without chemicals.

Planting green is becoming an interesting option on large farms, something which small to medium farms have been doing in South America for quite sometime. This involves using a crimper or a knife roller to roll or crush the vegetation cover/cover crops followed by no-till seeding. With smallholders, most farms get away with not using any herbicides but use weed smothering companion cover crops or mixtures of cover crops (legumes and non-legumes), such as mucuna, Dolichos lab lab or Desmodium or pumkin and so on.

But where herbicides must be used then banning glyphosate will be a real loss. I am prepared to be proven wrong, but I personally do not feel that glyphosate will be banned this time round, given that glophosate is the least toxic herbicide that has ever been produced, and given that it is rated as being possibly carsonigenic, not as being probably carsonigenic or as being carsonigenic. In fact ECHA's Committee for Risk Assessment does not classify glyphosate as a carcinogen. Also, it has become almost impossible to sort things out given all the claims and counter claims, and regional dimensions of the debate where for example US or Canada have no difficulty with glyphosate but Europe has, not only with glyphosate but also with other agrochemicals.

However, the scary part with glyphosate is that the food safety and water safety rules are not being strictly adhered to by farmers and government authorities also do not seem to be imposing them seriously, and thus we have seen glyphosate increasingly entering into food and water chains, due to using glyphosate as a desiccant too close to harvest or as a herbicide to keep water bodies clear from weeds. It should not be impossible to remove these risks altogether by imposing good practice standards.

I would think that industry probably has alternative plans if glyphosate is banned, and they will make sure they make extra profit from the situation. Liberty is one herbicide, manufactured by Bayer, which is similar in action to glyphosate and is already available but not at $4 per litre of active ingredient!

There are likely to be positive outcomes for CA farmers from glyphosate ban because there would be a move to find non-tillage methods of controlling weeds for economic and environmental reasons. No-till CA Farmers already use less glyphosate per hectare and per tonne of produce than farmers who use tillage and glyphosate to control weeds.

On the other hand, some no-till farmers may be forced to adopt intensive tillage to control weeds. In any case, it is high time that more innovative and cheaper ways to manage weeds without chemicals become available, and with CA this should be relatively less difficult to achieve than with poor quality tillage-based farming where both tillage and chemicals are used to control weeds but not very effectively.

David Dents comments
There are other ways to hold weeds in check. A six-field crop rotation including crops with different life styles (rather than cereal-cereal-oil seed rape-cereal-cereal... ) is quite effective. So is a well-timed shallow cultivation (a la Chatterton) but this goes against the no-till mantra.

Whatever the problem, there is usually several ways around it. The problem is to find ways that are also profitable. I do sometimes wonder whether the weed issue is cosmetic rather than critical - but I have no data.

---

It would be very useful to have a comment from John and anyone who has expertise to share. Weeds affect yield and were I think a problem this year on OurField. How is the clover?

Hello. Sorry I meant to post more but I'm struggling for time at the mo. I'll hopefully get chance to digest all the previous great comments over the weekend. In the meantime, a quick update, I've asked Wrights mill if they can still take our 15 tonnes and I'll let you know when they reply.

My only other suggestion is that we find lots of smaller mills to take a bit of the crop. We seem to be stuck in that middle ground where 15 tonnes is too small for some mills and too large for others! I think Brixton mill would probably still be happy to take a small amount to sell the flour themselves (unconfirmed at the mo) but I don't think they have the capacity to take 5 tonnes from us to return the flour.

Also, there are a few questions being asked that are unanswered and would be useful to know to help with decision making and emails to potential mills.

Hi,
The issue of pricing is interesting. Its a lot to do with what the market wants. This then comes back to the question of finding what markets are available prior to harvest, even prior to sowing.

Grain prices are liable to extreme volatility. Factors include quality, global trade, weather, time of year and levels of storage.
Organic prices are higher than non-organic, though a note of caution to say that these are also subject to volatility.

For reference here are some recent organic cereal prices:

Feed wheat £265, Milling £295 Feed barley £255, Malting £300 Feed oats £235, Milling £275 Beans £365

OurField doesn’t have an organic crop. But I wanted to point out that there are different markets. The organic one is strong and the crops are grown without glyphosate and without artificial nitrogen fertiliser.

A crucial aspect we must not forget, of course, is that growing crops at all is not easy. And growing organically is certainly not easier than non-organically. And achieving the specifications any of the available markets say they need is especially tough.

15% protein is popular with the largest bakeries. This is extremely difficult in the UK with organic production methods. Or with methods where less fertiliser is used. Nitrogen lifts protein values.

But 15% is not entirely necessary. Indeed it is debatable as to whether the current spec. which includes hagberg numbers and bushel weight is appropriate for the British Isles.

This leads onto questions on varietal choice. There are some who prefer heritage varieties. They have strong points with regard to growing well in low input situations, they often have good flavour but they will not yield as well and they will struggle to get protein levels above 12-13% even in a good year.

There is evidence that modern cereals are declining in mineral density. And that varieties that date back from the nineteen seventies are better able to pull nutrient from the ground than more modern varieties. But modern varieties are the ones being promoted.
Perhaps less yield but higher quality is what even slightly older varieties can deliver.

However, even an artisan baker will need to have a level of consistency. To have flours that are reliable. They want flavour and character but they also need to know how a flour will behave day to day and month to month.

There is a lot do and much is being done. And I believe improving relationships and improving understanding between growers, millers and bakers, and with the eaters is key. Which is why we are all here.
Cheers,
Steven

I've had the following positive reply from wrights mill:

Yes I am still happy to work with you on this project. I think we could manage 15 tonnes although it will cost you more to deliver it to our mill because of the smaller quantity. To progress this further I think we would like to see a sample of the grain first so we can establish the quality.

If all is well we would take in the 15 tonnes (delivery to be arranged by you). We would buy the grain at a price agreed and we would mill it into flour packed into 16kg bags. Given the smaller quantity we would deliver the 10 tonnes of flour (approx.) in one hit to your depot. You would need to ensure there is a fork truck to take the flour off into your store. We would charge you a price for the flour equal to the cost of the wheat plus £170 per tonne. This would need to be paid on a pro forma basis – before we took delivery of the wheat.

Please call to discuss when you have considered the proposal further.

ENDS

Is this something that is easily addable to the options as a costed proposal? I'm afriad I havn't got my head around the numbers yet.

Spelt flour costs

to clarify the math on the above, my understanding is that we would pay Wrights Mill a net £2,550 (15 tonnes x £170) to turn 15 tonnes of Spelt grain into 10 tonnes of Spelt flour, delivered in 16kg bags.

Based on the accounts so far (costs to date around £4,448, see the accounts thread), and assuming additional grain handling costs, the OurField cooperative members' net cost per 16Kg bag of milled non organic spelt flour would then be around £11.50 /bag.

Presently I buy Spelt flour for baking at about £2 /kg, often organic. That of course is the retail price for 1.5Kg bags..Although it is not organic, our flour was grown from organic seed, and without sprays ..so in terms of quality should be comparable.

Hello,
Thanks to all who have put out feelers for markets and pulled the figures together. Personally, I would love to have a some spelt to try and gift < 10K, ideally. It's also very exiting to think that the spelt could reach the market... It was a great surprise to hear the news on the quality this week.

Re, @johnanthonyallan 's questions around timings and speed of decision, it would be nice to think we could gift things on by Christmas, but I get the sense that everyone is quite stretched atm and it may be optimistic to feel that the collective would have the spelt milled and in hand in a couple of months time. Whether it's Christmas, Easter, summer, whatever, I would still love to bake an Our Field loaf, but I would be keen to try and sell the majority on to Doves, once everyone felt that they had a little for personal consumption etc.
I've always been under the impression that Doves were purely organic. @abbyrose, I would love to hear more on how this discussion went. E5 and Gails also sound like they are worth holding out for.
Look forward to hearing other thoughts... : )

Thank you @wendyalcock @johnanthonyallan @stevenjacobs @tessatricks @jamestickell for your comments and thoughts, all v interesting and helpful. I haven't heard back yet from the bakeries I contacted, but will contact them again today. @johnanthonyallan great to hear from Amir Kassam and David Dent as well, thanks for sharing those!
@wendyalcock great you heard back from Wrights. I guess the issue is if we only want to mill a smaller portion of the grain into flour ourselves, say 2 tonnes, then Wrights maybe aren't keen to do that? or would they still do that? Do you think Brixton would do just 2 tonnes milled into flour for us to use if we paid them for it?
It is through other members of the organising team that we heard about Doves, so I'm not sure @tessatricks what the situation is there. I will try and find out more. I think there also may be another option of a larger mill to sell to, will know more hopefully later today!

All exciting stuff. Happy that we've got some food grade produce to distribute.

Spoke to a watermill next to the farm where my friends are growing hemp unfortunately will only mill wheat, but has lead me to look into smaller mills - water and wind and I am getting some results.

A watermill where we may potentially be able to go and help do some of the milling + I'm chasing more possibilities

I'll post more later tonight when I've got more time & info.

Just a quick comment to say that there is no immediate hurry to sell or process the spelt. It is dry and under cover and is easy to store. It's worth remembering that Spelt comes complete with husk and needs 'dehulling' before it can be milled. Some, like Doves can deal with dehulling themselves, most mills will want it dehulled. I could sieve our spelt and get a tonne or two of dehulled seed out for a small sample, but most of the crop will need to be sent somewhere that can deal with it.
I'm sorry not to have been communicating more, we have been a bit busy. Still have some buckwheat and linseed to harvest and plenty of sowing to do before it gets too wet.
In answer to @johnanthonyallan 's question about our Spring Wheat...I'm not sure exactly how it yielded, but definitely under 2 tonne to the acre. It was a horrible year for spring crops round here, too dry when we wanted rain and vice versa. The spelt will probably perform better than our Mulika as it cost so little to grow and will be worth more per tonne. 50kg of N as Urea fertiliser is only £35 or so at current prices. It probably barely paid for itself on the Mulika even so. The sprays we used will have made the crop easier to harvest than our mucky spelt, but otherwise just cost money...
Golly, I do find Loomio hard to use.
John

Dear John
Very many thanks for finding time to reply. All the information is very useful indeed When next you have time to reply could you address these additional questions:
1 Would there be merit in using some of the spelt harvested as seed for next season? Are there technical or certification issues that would make this option impossible?
2 What have your farm team learned from growing spring spelt? Promising? Never again?
I hope the family is well.

I had a free day so I did some research on mills. I found a nice map online of working wind and water mills and tried calling most of the mills in the South East, East and South Eastern Midlands.

Quite a few are organic and can't mill non-organic unless they totally clean all the mill out afterwards which is a lot of work, so most of these were not interested.

I did however find three mills that could do some milling. I suggested to all of them that some us us may be interested in going to see the spelt being milled and potentially helping out, they all appeared to be open to this.

Amazingly one of the millers turned out to be an old friend, who I didnt realize was a miller. He runs the mill at http://www.fordendwatermill.co.uk/ near Tring which is a small mill. The mill there runs from a big millpond fed from a small stream. He can mill about 100 - 150kg a day. A dustbin full. He could do a small amount for us, but milling 1-2 tonnes is above what he'd like to do. The mill is run voluntarily. My friend earns his money doing other work.

I stupidly wasnt checking the document Wendy put together, so I also rang Wiken Windmill and left a message.

I spoke to the head miller at Pakenham Watermill who suggested they could mill some for us. They are volunteers and normally run the mill once a week. They could mill half a tonne in a day (they normally do short runs of about 150kg) and have storage for half a tonne of un-milled grain. It would have to be delivered to them in 20 or 25 kg sacks. I can borrow the equipment to sack up the grain if John can separate some without husks for us. I've got a truck that can easily carry a tonne, so potentially I could take it to the mill, some of us could go help out for a day, take a half tonne of flour away and leave them a half tonne to mill for us. He said he'll speak to his co-millers and let me know exactly what they could do - it sounded promising.

Nigel Moon the miller at Whissendine Mill, Rutland was very helpful, he wouldnt mill because hes organic but he said he might be able to help us find somewhere to dehull and told me to call Dave Pearce. Who turned out to be the head miller at Wicker Windmill.

Dave said that they mill 1/3 tonne a day, normally operate 7 days a month and expected they could do something for us - he's going to chat to his co-millers. We could probably go join in too. If I remember right they have storage for about 2 tonnes.

I'll the list of mills I contacted to the google doc Wendy started https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_6E1zJuAC0PxursgEGdjYAppTjRDfg1ibAG41547DA/edit

I was round my parents today and my mum said she had some spelt. I looked, but couldnt see it with the other flour. Turned out it's grain. Organic. Bought from Lidl, when they were doing an organic week a couple of months back.

Packet says - add double the volume of boiling water and simmer for 20 mins.

Had a small bowl with butter, salt and pepper. Quite tasty. I would be up for having a fair few kg of grain for myself & friends. I wonder if we could find someone to buy the grain/some of the grain if it was dehulled so that they could sell on in small bags? Probably worth talking to the 3 wholefood co-operatives, they even do their own bagging.

Pakenham mill said they dont loose much flower when milling, they expect to loose 0-10%

Great to hear everyone's ideas and thanks for all the research, amazing work! We are currently working with Grahame and John to put together a proposal everyone can vote on...if you have any last minute updates please share them now!!

And actually whilst putting together the proposal some big questions have come up... @wendyalcock @darren4 @johnanthonyallan @stevenjacobs @tessatricks @jamestickell @johncherry thanks for your contributions already!! If you or any of the other collective members (including me) can find out the answers to some of these questions that would be amazing. And also please do put up any other questions that have come up whilst investigating different options!
1. What would bakery pay for flour - if bakery who buys 1 tn get much better price than 100kg? Can bakers take it in 16 kg bags? or 30 kg bags?
2. What is the shelf life of spelt flour once it’s been through a stone mill?
3. Who or where will we store it once it's milled? and if we do end up selling flour who will take care of shipping it in and out, invoicing bakers etc? Is there is a co-op member who would want to take this on?
4. If we get it milled in small quantities - where will we ship it to once it's milled and how will we distribute it to people from there?
5. Are there any risks we don’t know about? like if it gets damp in a barn it will be a complete loss etc? can it get to the baker and then they send it back?

@grahamehunter will release the proposal in the next few days, once we have a bit more clarity on some of these questions

Abby and I were talking about these issues this morning..my reservation about including small-scale milling as an option was to make sure we understood that _ if we go down this route we are entering a slightly different business area - of wholesaling flour _ which will have other implications beyond farming; and it seems unreasonable to assume that OurField farmer John at Weston should take this on, as well as growing the stuff for us.

The other issue we discussed - not mentioned by Abby - is who would raise the invoices if we sold to a group of small bakers; how would they pay; to whom; and who would chase them if they paid slowly..? (To me, it still seems _ a weakness of OurField cooperative that there is no bank account _ - which we may wish to remedy if we go on for more years..

Thank you Grahame for raising some important topics. The intervention is timely.
It has been interesting observing the hesitant on-line discussion moving to address issues beyond farming. Such a shift is understandable for a number of reasons. There re three market modes in the food supply chain. 1. Food production is the first mode of the food system. 2 The second mode trades, manufactures and retails food. 3 The third is the food consumption mode including catering. The first is a failed market that is kept in place by incredible farmers and subsidies. [Farmers don't fail. They operate in a system, devised by society [Ourfielders are part of society] and its politicians, where commodity prices do not capture all the costs of production.] The second mode is a fairly effective market where profits are made and taxes paid and there are millions of accounting rules, armies of accountants and many corporates as well as artisanals, The third mode is another failed market where under-priced food has to be available for low income [under-paid?] consumers.

Consumers have lost sight of farming and its risks and challenges. We OurFielders, who are food consumers, have been transformed in 2017 by the opportunity to relate to the high risks that farmers have to face in mode one. The risks are high because both weather and markets can be volatile and make farming very high risk.

We have a lot of members who are active in the supply chain beyond food production. But do we have the experience, and more important, do we have the volunteer time to manage activities beyond the farm gate. I do not have such expertise and I cannot volunteer time to manage or do the accounts. My time time and material inputs so far have been limited to getting Professor David Dent to carry out some soil surveys and to finance some of his expenses.
Because I cannot make a significant contribution to developing inputs and activities beyond the farm gate and I have no idea what volunteer capacities we have I think we should take an approach that matches our capacities. If we have capacity with respect to leadership and operational inputs then they need to be revealed.

I like very much the idea of having a bank account.

It would be useful if this engagement on Loomio could be less hesitant.
Thank you Grahame

I think John Allens comments were very interesting, and I do hope that his sign-off comment - It would be useful if this engagement on Loomio could be less hesitant. has not deterred members from speaking further.
I think there is lots of useful information gathered and presented here now, and many thanks especially to Darren for his homework in speaking to mills.

To keep the momentum, I am therefore going to put out a proposal for a simple vote, to limit options, and to direct the avenue of our future moves..

Dear Grahame
Very many thanks for circulating the poll on what to do with the 15 tonnes.
May I pose some questions? I am beyond elderly but I have the curiosity of youth.
1 Has all the harvesting been completed on the farm? With what outcome? One understands it has not been a good year.
2 Will there be a harvest festival? It would be an opportunity for members to catch up?
3 Has it been agreed that the excellent OurField project will continue next year? If not can we have a poll? I am strongly in favour of continuation.
4 If yes - could John advise our cropping, agronomic & beyond farm gate options for 2017-2018?
5 Have you opened a bank account? I hope so.

Very good questions.. I would love to know if, when and where there will be a Harvest Festival..