Walkers go with the grain

MILLING their own organic flour is proving as winner for the Walkers, of Barellan.

Bettina

MILLING their own organic flour is proving as winner for the Walkers, of Barellan.

Riverina grain growers Robert and Betina Walker talk openly of the "wake-up call" their business received.

It was three years ago and the flour milling company to which the couple sold their organic grain went bust "and we didn't get one cent in the dollar back".

"That's when we went, 'stuff this, why should we allow our grain to go to a flour mill?'

"'Why don't we do it ourselves?'," Betina said.

So, they did.

And now the Walkers are the ones rolling in the dough.

Returns have rise up to 1000 per cent from the previous $450 a tonne for wheat, $300 for oats and $1000 for spelt.

Their secret: a back-to-basics product control from paddock to plate.

The Walkers run Whispering Pines Organics, at Barellan, a small farming town between Griffith and Temora famous for being the birthplace of tennis great Evonne Goolagong-Cawley.

Here on 284ha they grow spelt, wheat, barley, oats and triticale and run a prime lamb flock of 400 Dorpers.

The Walkers opted to "step outside the square and become certified organic" about 10 years ago because of Robert's health.

"Robert is a bad asthmatic and he found with the grain dust he'd get very sick," Betina said.

Certification took three years and involved a "lot of paperwork" but has been "well worth it".

Re-certification is required annually.

"We find now even in a dusty mill room with flour Robert doesn't get sick due to the lack of chemicals involved," Betina said. "We are just glad that we switched over."

After their bad experience with milling companies the Walkers started milling their own flour and oats in June last year. They started off with small stone grinders and did all the packaging and distribution themselves.

Wholesalers in Sydney and Melbourne came on board - "they were almost wetting themselves with excitement over our product. They couldn't believe you could get something so fresh" - as well as monthly trips to the Capital Region Farmers Market in Canberra whetted the appetite of a solid consumer base.

As demand increased, the Walkers bought a 700kg state-of-the-art Schnitzer stone grinder from Austria, which can produce "a tonne or more a day".

It arrived in May after spending three months on a boat from Europe.

The grain is poured in the machine's hopper and then "sieves its way down into the stones" that turn and slowly grind the grain.

It is then transferred to a sifting box and, from there, produces the flour.

A separate roller produces the oats, which are "very popular with muesli and porridge".

Betina said stone-ground flour was "better for you because all the nutritional contents remain, where as with the roller mill as soon as the flour touches metal you actually lose some of that".

Betina reckons it "won't be long at all" before they see a return on their investment in the machine. Plans are afoot to buy a similar-sized or bigger model.

The Walkers pride themselves on their fresh product.

Flour is "milled to order" and stored in 100kg airtight containers.

It is sold in 1kg, 5kg and 20kg bags and has a shelf life of 12 months (or six months for the rolled oats).

"We grow it, we mill it, we pack it. If an order comes in from a wholesaler, I can have 350kg gone within two days," Betina said.

"This week we had 4.5 tonnes to go to Melbourne and then our Sydney wholesaler contacted us and said we wanted another 350kg.

"We also had a lot of orders come in from the markets and other markets along the way that wanted product."

Betina said the business was happy to stick with supplying "boutique-style shops and wholesalers".

Product is stocked across the Riverina and in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

"We really don't want to go with Coles and Woolworths. It's just not our choice," Betina said.

"We just find that people want to buy direct off the farmer. They want to know where their food comes from, who produces it, what district is it from and who's the farmer that's behind it. And the less processed the better."

The Walkers researched several farmers markets to serve as their outlet for sales.

Sydney was "too far and the cost was horrendous". Wagga Wagga was deemed too expensive and Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands "not worth it".

They settled on Canberra and now make the the 3 1/2 hour trek once a month "stopping off at little towns along the way dropping off either direct to the customer or to a shop".

As well as their flour and rolled oats, the Walkers sell organic lamb, fruit and free-range eggs at the market.

"We cannot produce enough eggs or fruit on this farm for that market," Betina said.

About six lambs - cryovaced cuts range from $10 to $45/kg - are sold on each visit along with 20 cartons of eggs, which "are the first thing to sell out".

Home-grown lemons, oranges, mandarins, mulberries, pomegranates, peaches, pears, plums, quinces and figs are also snapped up by "even people that are not into organic, because it's not picked before it's ripe and stored in cold storage for months on end and then put out on the supermarket shelf".

One-kilogram bags of flour sell for $5, spelt commands $6 and rolled oats $8.

Betina said the flour was particularly popular among "the Dutch community who make a lot of black bread". "They want the spelt to as fresh as possible," she said.

"The European people understand stone grinding. Australians perhaps not so much. But overseas that's all you get."

Betina said about half the family's annual output of 200 tonnes of grain was used in the business, with plans to increase capacity "so it takes all of our crop".

"Then we can start to buy in other organic farmers grain as forward contracts," she said.

"If I could get even 1 per cent of the flour market in the Riverina I'd be happy."

Future plans include a semi-trailer refrigeration unit, which will increase storage capacity.

Betina said the advantage of the business was being in control of the product "from the growing of it right through to the final selling of it".