Australian Fair Food Forum

Starting a community oil mill in north eastern Victoria

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#1

There’s a new story up on the Open Food Network Learn site about the Australian Pumpkin Seed Company and Artisan Mill - check it out: https://openfoodnetwork.org/au/learn/story/starting-a-community-oil-mill/

I found Jay and Sharan’s story super inspiring - they run Australia’s only pumpkin seed farm, with Sharan in charge of the farming operation, and they also run The Artisan Mill, where they mill their own oil. What makes their operations so inspiring is that not only are they running an ethical farming business, they also donate 10% of their time to helping other farmers shift to organic, and they allow others to use their mill for free as a community service. That’s just the start of what this family does for supporting others to farm and value-add, have a read of the full story: https://openfoodnetwork.org/au/learn/story/starting-a-community-oil-mill/

I’d be interested to hear if people know of other examples of stories like this - please reply if so.

Or if you have questions about how the Rivetts got started, or you want to discuss a similar idea, then please get involved in this discussion! It’s pumpkin harvest season, so they’re a little busy right now, but hopefully they’ll get a chance to chip in if there are specific questions about their work. You can tag them @Pepo if there are specific questions.

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#2

This is very cool - that’s especially awesome about the donation of time and equipment to help others get going. What kind of other things can the mill be used for @Pepo?

#3

Hi Kirsten,
We provide GF flour milling along with packaging help. We hope in the next year to help with nut/seed spreads and pestos. Currently we are working out how to use part of our farm for helping young farmers get a start.

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#4

Lets hope we can help and inspire others to do social enterprising projects like ourselves.

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#5

Two of Farmer Incubator’s organisers are on here and may be good people to have a chat to about how they have set up their program. @emmy_grows or @georgiabsavage maybe one of you could start a new thread to share more about what Farmer Incubator’s approach has been to-date and what some dreams are for the future? Could be some good connections to be made between the two projects :slight_smile:

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#6

Hello Jen and community,

First time posting hope this is in the right place.

I am trying to source organic seed meals as an input for my home garden I like to make my own fertilizers, Iv been using none organic soybean meal at this stage and source it from a grain store but they cant seem to source any organic products of this nature would like to start using all cert organic inputs as to avoid all the chemicals, can you help?

Thank you for your time.