Grinding wheat and rye into Woodstock Flour at Berrigan
The next generation of Congdons have launched a new gig on the family farm — grinding their organic wheat and rye into flour. SARAH HUDSON reports.
CALL IT FLOUR POWER. With farmers transforming their livestock and horticultural crops into retail products and selling directly to customers for years now, it was only a matter of time before grain crops — normally the bastion of low-value mass markets — joined the trend.
For Ian Congdon and his partner Courtney Young, the idea to go against the grain and mill wheat and rye into organic Woodstock Flour came last year when the pair were contemplating a return to the Congdon family’s 810-hectare property at Berrigan, southern NSW.
“We wanted to make the family farm more viable by adding an enterprise,” Ian, 22, says.
“You see so many farms fail because they aren’t getting a fair price for what they produce.”
Adds Courtney, 24: “We thought if we could mill the grains and get a fair price we’d also be part of the family farm, part of the farm’s future, and we would also be connecting with consumers, showing them how their food is grown.”
After reading an article in The Weekly Times’ FARM magazine about Dad’s Oats in Natte Yallock, (a cropping farm family that processes the top 5 per cent of their oats and sells under their own rolled oats brand), the couple decided to buy a $700 Austrian mechanical mill in August last year to test the flour market.
They were surprised by the success.
Ian and Courtney now mill 100kg every week, and sell flour in 1kg and 5kg bags, plus 12.5kg buckets, mainly at farmers’ markets but also to bakers in Albury and Melbourne.
They sell wholegrain wheat flour and wholegrain rye flour, milling just before selling.
In addition, they take the mill to markets to show people how the grain is transformed into flour, and provide a finer flour if requested.
Such is the demand they have just bought a new American stone mill that will process more than one tonne of stone ground flour weekly, which will enable them to sell to more bakeries.
“The idea of Woodstock Flour started as an experiment, a bit of fun, with low start-up costs to see if something like this would work,” says Courtney, who at the time was finishing her postgraduate studies in agricultural science, while working with Ian as a farm hand on a property at Whittlesea.
“We didn’t want to commit to anything too big,” she says. “But then it went out of control.
We didn’t realise there would be the demand for flour there was. It mainly came from markets wanting us to sell, and then came the bakeries. By Christmas we’d broken even. We felt supported and everyone was enthusiastic.
“Now we want to get more serious about it and have made a business plan.”
In November they moved to the farm, where Ian works full time with his parents, Bob and Jenny, running Woodstock Farm, while Courtney manages the milling process, with plans to build a new shed to house the mill this year.
Woodstock Farm is a fourth-generation property, founded by Ian’s great-grandparents in the 1930s. The farm gained organic certification in 1996.
It has about 140 hectares of crops: 90 hectares of rye, which produce one tonne a hectare, 30 hectares of wheat and oats, which produce three tonnes and two tonnes a hectare respectively, as well as 12 hectares of spelt and two hectares of Khorasan wheat — an ancient grain that has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.
There are 25 Murray Grey breeders, sold to organic meat markets at about 12-18 months of age. And there are 650 Bond sheep, which are a dual-purpose breed — good for wool and meat production — with meat sold to organic markets.
They mill just a tiny fraction of the grains they grow, while the bulk is sold through organic agent Primal Foods. Although once they install their larger processing plant, potentially all that is harvested will be made into flour.
Crops are sown in April and harvested in December, with livestock then feeding on stubble.
Crop rotation sees a program that starts with wheat, followed by rye, then oats, then sown back to pasture such as lucerne, millet, ryegrass and native grasses for up to a decade.
Given their organic approach, the family focuses on heritage varieties such as cereal rye, spelt and Khorasan wheat, which they believe are more resistant to pests and disease.
The Congdons control weeds through the use of pastures. In past years they have ploughed in pastures in spring, kept land fallow over summer — when weeds are ploughed in — and then sown crops in April.
But Ian says they’re moving away from fallow paddocks, as this can lead to loss of top soil from winds; bare land also means there’s no carbon being put back into the soil.
“So we’re trying to reduce fallow land by use of pasture cropping,” says Ian, who studied landscape management at University of Melbourne, where he met Courtney.
The family is now increasingly sowing summer-active pastures, which go dormant in winter, at which time they direct drill crops into pastures — a process of sowing seed without cultivating the soil. Dormant pasture then acts as mulch during winter.
Weeds are also minimised through scarifying, and Ian says a choice of heritage-breed rye grows to two metres tall and out competes weeds.
Soil health is maintained through holistic management, where large mobs of livestock are grazed on pasture for short periods to promote perennial pasture species on the red loamy soil.
“We put in sheep or cattle for two days, they smash the grass and eat it right down and then we leave it for two months, which stimulates the soil and we get more feed,” Ian says.
They have 120 hectares of irrigated country, with the farm receiving an average annual rainfall of 400mm.
Once harvested, grain is kept in silos and milled on demand.
The smaller machine processes two kilograms every few minutes — a slow process, with the couple discovering that milling rye has a few annoying side effects.
“We can’t stop sneezing and getting itchy, but we wear masks and I think we’re slowly developing a tolerance,” says Courtney, who is due to give birth to their first child this month.
Once milled, the flour is hand-sifted to remove native grass seeds, hand-bagged and hand-labelled.
“It’s all very grassroots,” Courtney says.
Courtney and Ian — who are both keen cooks and make a mean chocolate brownie — mill twice a week, just before selling the flour.
“The fresher the flour the more flavour and nutrients it has,” Courtney says. “We are trying to educate customers about flour.”
Courtney also works part time for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, an organisation that promotes small-scale farmers who champion ethically and ecologically sound food production.
“We compare it to coffee, or wine and terroir, in that it also has aroma, flavour and texture and like coffee it’s important to know it’s single origin and what variety it is,” Courtney says.
“There’s a little bit of Woodstock in this product and I think they’re starting to get it. The tell us that opening a bag is like the smell of summer or fresh fields of wheat.”
FARM FACTS
Ian Congdon and his partner Courtney Young run Woodstock Flour on the Congdon family’s 810-hectare organically certified property at Berrigan, southern NSW.
The couple mill 100kg of flour a week, and sell wholegrain wheat flour and wholegrain rye flour, priced at $7 for 1kg, $32.50 for 5kg and $62.50 for 12.5kg. They sell at farmers’ markets and to bakers in Albury and Melbourne.
Their commercial mill can process one tonne of stone ground flour weekly.
Woodstock Farm has about 140 hectares of crops including rye, wheat, oats, spelt and Khorasan.
The bulk of the grains are sold through organic agent Primal Foods.
The family also has Murray Grey cattle and Bond sheep.
Ian and Courtney plan to start producing high extraction flours next year and, depending on harvest, spelt and Khorasan flours.
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