by Jennifer Scott

Stepping into Speerville Mill, situated near Debec in New Brunswick’s Saint John River Valley, is like entering an idyllic place where dedicated people, wholesome food, and supportive community make the world go ‘round. Light streams in the windows, illuminating millions of little particles – floating flour – from the most recent milling. Stu Fleischhaker and Todd Grant, who run the place on a daily basis, are themselves lightly dusted. Stu explains the various processes – cracking, grinding, sifting, hulling, rolling – energetically waving his arms to show how the grain moves from one level to another.

It seems incredibly complex to a novice visitor, yet it’s so simple and straightforward: wheat is stone ground to produce whole wheat flour.

Many of the additives in processed flours are necessary, given that these products are often transported great distances and sit around in warehouses, stores, and peoples’ houses for long periods of time. Stu Fleischhaker, the main instigator behind Speerville Mill, proposes an alternative vision: a bioregional approach to the food system in which food producers, processors, and consumers operate as much as is reasonable within the maritime region. The grains are all grown locally, and the milled products are all sold locally. This is important because stone-ground flours with no preservatives must be fresh.

One of the founding principles of the Speerville Flour Mill was to provide a market for the grain grown by local farmers. Why? Less than one percent of the Maritimes’ available cereals and flour products is actually grown and processed in this region. According to the mill’s mandate, as expressed in its pamphlet, "it is critical socially, environmentally, and economically to encourage both the production and processing of local grains." This becomes important in light of certain facts: the average distance between where consumers live and where food is raised is now over 1500 miles; the region imports more than 90 percent of its food; and nearly one third of the transport trucks on the road today are carrying food (with an average fuel consumption of 5-6 miles per gallon). The mill’s pamphlet further states, "the sanity of shipping our mon-ey away, poisoning our environment and risking the security of what’s left of our local food system is questionable."

Besides making our food system more secure and our highways safer, buying food grown and processed in the region helps farmers in several ways. Let us take, as an example, the Fyfe farm in P.E.I., a typical family farm, with a typical amount of debt, and typical cash flow problems. In addition to their dairy operation, the Fyfes also sell organically-grown grains to Speerville Mill. If consumers in the Maritimes make it a point to purchase the Speerville organic grains, then the mill can pay the Fyfes approximately $2,000 more than they would get if they sold it as feed grain for animals. That $2000 may not seem like much, but for a third generation family farm in debt, it could mean the difference between losing that farm and keeping it. Consumers who buy locally produced food are in essence supporting the farms that hold together our rural communities.

In a recent newsletter to members of the Speerville Mill Co-op, Stu explains that the Speerville initiative was one of the earliest community supported agriculture ventures. The Mill was first organized in the mid-’70s as a community-based co-operative, but actual milling did not begin until January, 1982. The Mill was soon serving markets up and down the Saint John River Valley. By the end of the ’80s, markets had expanded to include most of the Maritimes and Northern Maine. Although the mill will not be expanding its markets any more geographically, there are plans to expand its buyer base within the bioregion. This is done in two ways – by providing consumers with a quality local alternative to imported grains, and by developing the diversity of different grain products. Initially, the mill only produced stone ground whole wheat flour, but it now produces a variety of organic and conventional grain products – including Saint John River Cereal (a take-off on Red River cereal) and certified organic rolled oats, which will be introduced into the Co-op Atlantic grocery chain in 1994.