Country Living Grain Mill

The Country Living Grain Mill is a high capacity, hand operated mill that can easily be motorized because of its unique design incorporating a handle-flywheel which doubles as a v-belt pulley.  The Country Living Grain Mill is constructed from strong cast metal alloy and has a super tough powder coat finish.  This finish won't chip or peel.

The Country Living Grain Mill is considered to be the “gold Standard “of grain mills.  In other words, you get what you pay for.  If you are interested in making an investment in a quality product that will last for many years and not need replacement, the Country Living Grain Mill is for you.

If you are fond of the unmistakable taste of bread made from fresh ground flour, you will be interested in using the Country Living Grain Mill on a daily basis.  If you do not want the daily exercise of grinding your flour by hand, there is a motorizing option with the Country Living Mill which is simple to hook up. Some owners have adapted their mill to operate off of their exercise bike

On the other hand, maybe you are content to let others bake, but you want to own a grain mill in the event that there is some kind of emergency that necessitates relying on emergency storage food.  Emergency food programs tend to have a large percentage of grains and beans.  Grains and beans have the longest shelf life but need to be ground up for efficient use. Using the hand powered Country Living Grain Mill during an emergency when you don’t have the luxury of electricity makes perfect sense.

The following story by the Jack Jenkins, owner of Country Living Grain Mills really brings home the point of the importance of the right kind of grinding plates.

Breaking Out of the Stone Age by Jack Jenkins (creator of the Country Living Grain Mill)

“When we bought our first grain mill, one with big thick stone grinding plates and a ¾ horse motor, we honestly thought that we were making a prudent and wise choice.  After all, “stone mills were what Mother Nature herself would recommend” - at least that’s what the woman who sold us the mill said.  However, reality and research showed us that we were actually awash in ignorance when we chose the stone mill.

My Stone Age ignorance started me on an education process that has lasted well over a decade and is still going on.  Here are a few of the things I’ve learned about grinding plates for grain mills.

1) Aluminum pancakes aren’t good.  Mother Nature isn’t always discriminate about such things as lead and arsenic seeping through the groundwater or existing stone itself, but what about man-made grinding stones?  Surely man has improved upon nature.  “What are man-made grinding stones manufactured from?  I asked.  “Aluminum oxide, plus binders,” came the answer.  Aluminum has long been linked to a woeful list of ailments; dreaded Alzheimer’s is the latest.  Ingesting aluminum in powdered form in your bread and pancakes is about as smart as eating slug bait for breakfast.  Yet I and thousands of others have done just that because of the misinformation that is rife in grain grinding lore.

2) Stone and enamel don’t mix.  An internationally respected research institute dedicated to upgrading food production and resources for third world countries extensively researched the effectiveness and viability of grain mills with both stone plates and those with iron and steel. Their recommendation, without reservations, iron or steel over stone! Why? Primarily because of the grit and particulates left behind by some grinding plates. I saw numerous pictures of skulls, both old world and new world, with the teeth worn completely away. Researchers say the total destruction of the teeth was the result of eating stone ground grains.

3) A variety of stones have been used as grinding surfaces for grain and food mills - often whatever stone has been available has been the "stone of choice". I have even seen sandstone grinding plates. Unfortunately, for the millions of molars that have masticated stone-ground flour over the centuries, particulates break away from the grinding surface quite easily.

4) The coolness of the grind is often dependent on at least two factors:

a) How efficiently the grinding surface works
b) The speed of the mill

A superior design means a cooler grind.

The quest for a superior grinding plate has been neither easy nor inexpensive.

When I started manufacturing the Country Living Grain Mill we used a cast iron plate made from sand castings. They worked, but there was not enough control over every aspect of the grinding plate. So recently we decided to spend thousands of dollars more on an injection die that would allow us to create individual wax patterns for each set of plates. For many centuries, artisans of fine (and very expensive) sculptings have used this "Lost Wax" process for reproducing their masterpieces.

This state of the art "investment" casting method is so accurate that it could reproduce even a fingerprint if necessary. So, just like the great sculptors who have captured their timeless and priceless creations in metal over the centuries, each set of Country Living high-carbon steel grinding plates is formed using a refined version of the ancient time-proven lost wax process.

Each plate has its own wax model which is coated with a colloidial silica slurry. Then, it's put into an autoclave (an oven using both heat and pressure). This, of course, melts the wax (Lost Wax) leaving only the shell. This shell, because of the heat and pressure, turns it into an extra ordinarily tough monolithic structure.

Finally, 3,000 degree molten high-carbon steel is poured into the shells. Once cooled and hardened, the plates must be machined to assure complete flatness. No other grinding plates in the world go through more exhaustive processes than the plates for your Country Living Mill.

Fine - Tough - Long Lasting - High-Carbon Steel: Country Living Grinding Plates.

Jack Jenkins
Country Living Productions