Dartington Mill Case Study
Dartington Mill (DM) is a Community Interest Company made up of two farmers and a sourdough baker, all based in Dartington on the edge of Totnes, South Devon. The partnership arose out of the work undertaken by Grown in Totnes (GinT) to find a future iteration: the hope was to pass the enterprise on to partners who shared the original vision and ethos and could add value to the flour in order to make a viable livelihood for members of the local community, that would also benefit the original funders and supporters of GinT. See GinT Case Study - 9.1 Approaching the End and 9.2 Back to the Community to read how GinT sought to create a new future.
All three partners in DM had previously worked with GinT: The Apricot Centre had grown YQ wheat*; Old Parsonage Farm grew peas and John Letts’ Heritage Population Wheat, and The Almond Thief had made a number of specialist loaves to mark various Grown In Totnes events.
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
Background Information to the Business Trio:
The Apricot Centre at Huxham’s Cross Farm
Huxhams Cross Farm occupies 34 acres of land on the edge of the Dartington Hall Estate. The land was bought by the Biodynamic Land Trust in 2015 and The Apricot Centre tenants the farm. Founders Marina O’Connell and Bob Mehew developed the land from 5 bare, conventional barley fields to a rich and diverse farm, certified both organic and biodynamic and designed on permaculture principles.
In spring 2017 they planted 1,000 fruit trees and bushes and 3,000 agroforestry trees, vegetable production was begun and hens and cows were introduced. They now sell via their produce box and their Friday stall at the Totnes market. As of Summer 2020 they have just harvested the 4th year of YQ wheat*.
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
Jon and Lynne Perkin took on a 20-year, farm business tenancy at Old Parsonage Farm on the Dartington Estate, in March 2015. That year they bought their initial herd of goatlings and took on the management of the Sharpham Jersey herd. “Dartington Dairy” was launched in 2016, which focused on goat milk and icecream. An important ethos of the farm is to provide public access and education around farming to enable people's understanding of the farm environment and where their food comes from; prior to the Coronavirus pandemic this was through farm open days and by offering ‘Milking’ and ‘Farmer for the Day’ experiences.
In Summer 2016, Jon harvested a fodder crop of peas and wheat and the dried peas were used by GinT and milled into a pea flour that proved very popular. In Summer 2018 he grew John Letts’ Heritage Population Wheat.
Since GinT handed over to Dartington Mill, Jon and Lynne have had to rethink the economics of the farm and have stopped selling goat milk products to shops; as Jon said “I don't wish to give away 40% of my income any more.” They are now selling produce directly to customers. 30 goats from their herd have been kept, along with a suckler herd of cows, and they will bring in sheep when they are needed to maintain the pasture. The farm is managed organically, but isn’t yet all certified organic; parts of the farm will be fully organic next year (2021). They are moving largely over to arable production and have developed an agroforestry field: fruit trees, owned by the Apricot Centre are grown in rows with alleys of crops grown in between. The crop alleys are wide enough for a combine to harvest.
The Almond Thief
The Almond Thief is a sourdough bakery and café owned by Dan Mifsud.The bakery, which is based on the Webbers Yard Industrial Estate in Dartington, started trading in December 2014, initially supplying local businesses with organic sourdough bread.
In May 2015, the bakery opened its doors to customers to buy bread, pastries and coffee. The retail element of the bakery was well received by the local community and quickly developed into a busy retail bakery cafe, welcoming over 200 customers a day. Due to demand and lack of capacity, Dan decided to largely cease wholesale bread production in May 2017.
Coronavirus has caused Dan to reconsider how the bakery operates and how to build in more resilience. The bakery is now open for just 2 days per week, and 1 morning in South Street in Totnes, for takeaways only. 50% of the day’s produce is available through click and collect from either venue, the rest of the produce is sold on a first come, first served basis.
In February 2020 the bakery was making 6,500 loaves per month. This had dropped down to 3,000 in August. The aim now is to build up wholesale production alongside their retail operation, as part of a major refit of the bakery including the purchase of a new bread oven. Dan is aiming to increase production to 750-1,000 loaves per day over the next two years.
The focus is to sell bread via bread hubs, the loaves to be pre-ordered by customers and delivered to other businesses: The Apricot Centre via their local produce box and The Kitchen Table, via their new business The Kitchen Pantry, a hub for locally made produce including their own meals and accompaniments.
It was an obvious partnership. Two farmers that had demonstrated a propensity for agroecological farming, diversification and thinking outside of the box all their farming years, and a craft sourdough bakery. All three had formed strong links with the Totnes community in the relatively short time since they arrived in Dartington and all three had a unique local food offering. When the opportunity to take on the work of Grown in Totnes arose, they each had one leg of the stool covered and together had the potential to form a stable, viable and exciting offering.
Holly Tiffen, founder of Grown in Totnes, interviewed the three parties to discover how Dartington Mill was progressing, what changes they had made and what they had discovered about the business since taking it on.
Dartington Mill Case Study
6. Processing the Crops
7. Pricing and Delivery (Not included)
8. Marketing and Communications
9. Learnings
10. Support and Offers to Others
Note that this case study is written to follow the same chapter headings as the Checklists of the Toolkit and the GinT Case Study
1. Planning the Dartington Mill Enterprise
The three parties are equal partners in DM. The two farmers sell their grain to DM, then The Apricot Centre buys back the YQ Population wheat* (that they grew) from the mill as flour for retail sales, and The Almond Thief purchases the flour (grown at Old Parsonage Farm) from DM for use in the bakery. DM are selling flour to themselves for £1.20 per kilo.
The key elements in favour of this enterprise are the range of skills amongst the 3 parties. Between them, the DM team have practical farming and growing experience, a good understanding of mechanics, and the engineering skills to ensure that the growing, harvesting, cleaning and drying of the crops is taken care of. They have marketing and retail experience, strong finance and fundraising skills, links with volunteers, apprenticeships and the community and their team includes a secondary user - the commercial baker, who adds value to the crops by turning them into bread and other baked goods. Having a baker in the equation is the key aspect to this partnership making the concept of growing and selling local grains stack up financially; as GinT discovered, the amount of flour sold to the public locally is small and trying to make a livelihood solely out of small-scale flour production is not practical. All of the 3 parties benefit: a sensible price is paid to the 2 farmers and the farmer and baker buy the flour direct, cutting out the in-between costs that are normally incurred (and were incurred with the GinT model). Many of the external, intermediate layers conventionally found in the supply chain have been removed or minimised: grain merchants, storage costs, contractor costs, the miller’s mark-up and transport costs.
As Jon Perkin said:
“In the past, growing organic wheat hasn’t stacked up financially, as crops are worth more than what is commercially available. Selling wheat at £200 per tonne for organic doesn’t stack up as you don’t get paid during the non-cropping years, and the price paid for the grain isn’t sufficient to cover these years. Through the Dartington Mill partnership I will be paid a sustainable, guaranteed price for my wheat and I am personally invested in ensuring that I get a good harvest. If you have loans and rent and labour costs on top, there is very little room for manoeuvre with farmgate* sales.”
Dartington Mill aspires to purchase all of the grain grown by the two farmers, though for this to happen sales need to grow. Jon needs The Almond Thief to be using a tonne per week to give him the security he needs. Even then there will be a surplus for which DM will need to find a buyer.
DM has also bought EHO Gold wheat from another farmer, Richard Rogers at Underwood Farm in Beeson (who grew crops for GinT). The Almond Thief has been buying this for use in bread they have been baking over the past 4 months, since the country went into lockdown in March 2020, so this is an ongoing relationship between the Rogers and DM. The Rogers have grown 600kg of a Paragon/Mulika mix and 1.5 tonnes of EHO Gold for DM in 2020.
2. Growing the Crops
Looking forward, Jon and Lynne’s plan for Old Parsonage Farm is to maintain the 150 acres of permanent pasture and put the rest in an arable rotation (250-300 acres). The winter rotation is Millers’ Choice and YQ population wheat* and the Spring rotation will be Einkorn, spelt and hemp in year 1, oats and spring peas in year 2 and herbal leys* in year 3, ie cereal, green manure, cereal, legume, cereal.
A total of 2/5 will be put down to green manures at any one time to form regenerative leys*. They have invested in a plough, drill, harrow*, cultivator*, mulch topper* and a combine. This frees them up from relying on contractors and gives them control: not only over when the ground is prepared and how, ensuring that he gets the seed bed that he is seeking, but that the crops are harvested at peak time and they have the flexibility to experiment. Jon wants to trial direct drilling, which doesn’t invert the soil and so reduces degradation of the soil structure and the release of carbon. Prior to their taking over the land it was farmed intensively and the soil heavily degraded. By direct drilling, and drilling into green manures, Jon will improve the structure and ecology of his soil.
Old Parsonage Farm wasn't able to sow any winter crops in 2019 because the weather was too wet. As a result only spring sown crops were planted, requiring a later harvest, which means they missed the beautiful harvesting weather in early August. Jon grew 30 acres of Mulika wheat and 54 acres of oats; the oats were grown in alleys in the agroforestry field. The soil is acidic but the ever-adaptable oats can cope with this.
In addition to growing for DM, Jon has grown 22 acres of hemp for The Hemp Avatar, and 25 acres of Einkorn for Andrew Gilhespy, another new local miller based in Buckfast.
In Autumn 2020, Jon hopes to plant 45 acres of YQ population wheat*, Millers Choice and one other grain, and 30 acres of Mulika, all organic, for Dartington Mill. He will grow all of his own animal feed and in the future hopes to grow spelt, peas and beans too.
The Apricot Centre planted 5 acres of YQ population wheat* in Autumn 2019. Since taking over the farm and improving the soil they have achieved 1 tonne per acre since the third year (the 2019 and 2020 harvests), and this year it was harvested in early August. They have also grown Borlotti beans, various white and brown beans and ying-yang beans. They have invested in a shipping container and dehumidifier to dry out the beans, and hope in the future to sell pea and bean flours.
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
3. The Processing Facilities
The processing equipment is currently all based in a barn at Old Parsonage Farm. They have been experimenting with the GinT dehuller and are pleased with the results.
It has successfully dehulled spelt, and recent trials with oats have resulted in 70% being dehulled the first time through, similar to the results of GinT trials. The difficulty is in separating the dehulled from the hulled as they don’t have a winnower. DM are looking to buy an upmarket cleaner, for about £2,000, which will both clean the crops after harvest and be used for separating hulled from dehulled grains. It is likely to be difficult to do this with oats, as there is very little variation between the size of a hulled and dehulled oat grain. Success will be dependent on being able to purchase sieves of the right size.
Their processing barn isn’t vermin-proof and they are planning on moving the mill to the bakery.
4. Harvesting the Crops
Jon Perkin has bought a combine harvester, a critical investment for both farmers. Without it they wouldn’t have the flexibility needed around harvest time to take advantage of dry weather windows and get the crop in at the most opportune time. They would have lost much of the harvest this year, as they have in the past, if they had been reliant on contractors.
At the time of writing this Case Study it is harvest time 2020. Despite a wet couple of weeks and strong winds, 54 acres of oats have been harvested. They had lodged* but Jon was able to get the combine header under the crop to pick it up and, as oats dry quicker than wheat because they are a less dense grain, the harvest should dry out nicely. 30 acres of Mulika wheat (Spring sown modern bread-making wheat) is ready for harvest but it needs a week of dry weather before harvesting. 1 field was very weedy and becoming diseased; this has been harvested and is being milled for animal feed.
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
5. Care of the Crops
DM are planning on purchasing a cleaner to clean the crops after harvest. The drier that GinT sold to them has insufficient capacity for the majority of the crops Jon is growing. It dries up to 5 tonnes; Jon plans to scale up to 150 tonnes of different crops annually.
DM have bought a couple of silos, providing 12 tonnes of sealed storage. Clearly this will need to increase for subsequent years, and this year they will need to sell the wheat quickly without more storage.
6. Processing the Crops
They have the GinT polisher and flaker, although currently neither of these are being used. The mill and sieve have been replaced by a 40” stone electric mill from the USA.
This was funded by the Totnes community through the Local Entrepreneur Forum, alongside 40% leader funding and a grant from LUSH cosmetics. Theirs is a far more sophisticated mill than GinT’s, it mills incredibly slowly and has much larger stones (1.5m in diameter). These factors ensure that the flour remains cool throughout the milling process. The sieve is integrated with the mill and the entire process is automated so that the milling and sieving are continuous, greatly reducing the need for manual labour. However the grain is fed into the mill by hand.
The mill and sieve are moving to the Almond Thief bakery. This will make the operation smoother, ensuring Dan has the flour when he needs it and that it is appropriately stored for food use. The plan is for Dan to take over the milling from Jon, and to train his staff. The mill will be displayed in the bakery window so customers will be able to see it in operation; a wonderful way to visually tell the story, enabling customers to make the link with where their bread has come from.
Milling started in March. In April/May 2020 they milled 1073Kg YQ* and 160Kg of the EHO Gold. They are currently milling approximately 150Kg per week. The Almond Thief are currently using 100kg per week of EHO Gold flour milled by DM and grown by the Rogers at Underwood Farm, about 20 miles away in Beeson. In order to maximise the nutritional value of the flour the flour is milled the night before baking.
Dan’s wish is to use as much locally grown grain as he can in the bakery, and he hopes to mill all of the grain that he needs for the bakery on site. He wishes to work towards a 100% Dartington grown and milled bread to create a truly local loaf. It will be a 100% wholegrain tin loaf, using most likely a combination of Mulika, YQ* and other heritage wheats. Currently, in addition to flour from DM, he is buying flour from Shipton Mill and Cann Mill. A large proportion of the flour from Shipton Mill is UK grown, however both Shipton Mill and Cann Mill supplement grain supplies from further afield. The current loaf is made from 15% Dartington Milled flour, ie The Roger’s EHO Gold.
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
The sieve ensures that all of the white flour is captured, not lost in the bran as happened with the GinT sieve.
8. Marketing and Communications
Unlike GinT, the partners at DM do not intend to sell their produce exclusively to the local Totnes area. Old Parsonage Farm are hoping to sell some of their oats to LUSH, the ethical cosmetics company, for soap. LUSH have a hammer mill that they will use for the oats, but they will need to be dehulled first by DM. DM also intend to sell their products wholesale to other bakers.
Since GinT handed over, the Apricot Centre have taken on the retail selling of the YQ* flour and it is now being sold at an increasing number of shops in Totnes and Exeter, and to Plymouth markets via the Tamar Grow Local food hub. They plan to sell it nationally online in the future, to the biodynamic market.
2020 is the year the Coronavirus took hold of the world, and for the local food sector it looked like there would be some silver linings. People turned to growing vegetables in their gardens. Nationally, veg box customers increased by over 100%, flour sales went through the roof and flour couldn’t be found on shop shelves for weeks at a time as people stockpiled and started making their own bread. Sadly, these shifts don’t appear to have stuck. The Apricot Centre’s food sales are still at double from pre-Corona, but are half of those at the height of lockdown. Old Parsonage Farm also noticed significant increases in sales from their farm shop, from March to mid-April, but these too have dropped back.
DM started milling and selling flour at the beginning of March and their biggest challenge is to build sales. Ideally they need another baker on board to provide a guaranteed market. They have a unique story to tell and they need an effective way of telling it, to build customer loyalty and excitement in their offering:
Their new American stone mill is unique to the UK - the stones are 1.5 m wide and it is designed to go sufficiently slowly that the wheat doesn’t heat up, so the nutritional level is not compromised
There are very few losses during the sieving process; its efficiency ensures that all of the nutritious endosperm is left in
Buying flour from DM means local customers are supporting the local economy through the livelihoods of the grower, the miller and the baker
Jon intends to grow grain that moves away from the modern style and will include populations, organic and heritage grains. Both farmers are improving the soil they farm, with net environmental benefits for all
Following in the footsteps of GinT, DM intend to create a product that is unique in what it is, how it is produced, and who it is supporting
* Denotes items featured in the Glossary
9. Learnings
We asked the partners at DM what advice they would give to anyone setting up a small scale crop growing/milling business:
Jon has realised, through all of his diversification projects, that having a fantastic product isn't enough. Unless it is coupled with good marketing capabilities it won’t succeed. He recommends that 60% of the available budget goes specifically on marketing. He encourages new entrepreneurs to undertake market research to demonstrate where their sales are going to come from and develop their branding and marketing strategy - before making anything. Often, the people who are good at ideas and making great products are not the same as those good at marketing. Jon said “If you are a farmer that happens to be good at marketing, let someone else farm!”
Be prepared for the level of investment required and explore grants and funding options.
Ensure that you have a strong team, with good communication between all parties and the range of skills required to make the enterprise work.
10. DM’s Support and Offers to others
Jon Perkin is able to contract out local combining, sowing and field preparation
Jon has a small baler and can bale straw for the local straw bale housing market
Dartington Mill are able to offer a service of milling and other crop processing
The GinT sieve and mill are for sale – contact Bob Mehew from the Apricot Centre for further details - bob.mehew@apricotcentre.co.uk