RESOURCES: Processing The word processed is synonymous today with poor quality massproduced foods with suspicious ingredients, and yet, the idea of simple processing of food to make it more digestible, tasty, or more easily used in cooking is very old. Here we have been trying out the ideas of human scale processing using pedal power - which is a much more entertaining way of going about it than simply pressing a switch! The Mill Bike was designed by Fergus Walker, the Smoothie Bike by Uula Jero.
The Mill Bike Written by Fergus Walker
The mill bike is the essence of the traditional wind or watermill, but powered by bicycle – this is technology at its most small and beautiful. While pedalling your own flour or oatmeal, and looking inside to see the inner workings, you can ponder three important things: how to keep fit and save our planet by joining the Food Gym, how to reap the health benefits of the freshest flour and homemade bread instead of eating dubious factory ware, and how to build resilience and boost the local economy with small-scale artisan production.
The Food Gym
Why do we have the situation where we spend all day at our desks in the office, then have to go the gym to get fit, using up electricity to power the gym equipment? Why couldn’t we do something meaningful with all that energy – such as being able to see the fruits of our efforts manifested as tasty, healthy food? Will the entrepreneurs and designers please come forward?
Fresh flour = tasty and good for you
In Austria, many people have small electric grain mills in their kitchens, and hospitals mill fresh flour daily to bake bread for patients – as the nutritional benefits of fresh flour are greatly valued. Research has shown that as soon as the wheat grain is cracked and exposed to the air, the most vital nutrients start to break down – some within hours of milling.
Human scale technology
In France, within a generation, several
wheat farmers have gone from being mere suppliers of grain to large buyers, to being entrepreneurial paysan boulangers, or farmerbakers. These farmer bakers grow heritage varieties of wheat, mill the grain into flour, and bake loaves that they sell at farmers markets. There is now a farmer miller in East Lothian – Wheatrig Flour, and a miller-baker at Blair Atholl Watermill. So we are just one step away from having farmer-bakers too!
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I can’t myself raise the winds that might blow us or this ship into a better world. But I can at least put up the sail so that when the winds comes, I can catch it - E.F. Schumacher