Our farming project.
The company has numerous projects;
One of our main concerns is the installation of an organic cereal production.
With six hectares,we currently produce all of our einhorn-wheat.
The culture project.
The motivations behind our farming project:
The first is personal, stemming from a wish to oversee the bread's fabrication in it's entirety: from the planting of the grain of wheat; until the finished loaf.
The second motivation is the need to farm a diversity of varieties.
It is virtually impossible today to find a reliable, regular supply of old-fashioned varieties of wheat. (The millers stopped producing these varieties, because of the lack of demand from the bakery world).
Yet the farming of these very types of wheat.. einhorn, "touselles blanches", "meuniers d'Apt", "rouge de Bordeaux".. offers a solution to various problems.
An ever growing number of people are intolerant to gluten. The old-fashioned varieties of cereals are often low in gluten, and they can be made into bread ,without having to be mixed with other flours.
What's more, because of their "rusticity", the old-fashioned varieties are well-suited to the poor soil in this part of the world, and hence the perfect choice of crop for an organic farmer.
Perspectives:
Two tons of cereal per hectare is the accepted average in today's organic farming.
Cereals are grown once every three years in the crop rotation, alternated usually with beans,peas or another vegetable crop.
Concerning the old-fashioned varieties, ten tons per year is adequate to cover the bakery's needs..this amount corresponds with fifteen hectares of farm land. Significantly it justifies the money invested in stocking the silos, in the milling, the bluterie(machine used to separate the flour from the husks)..
The farming project aims at total autonomy in the production of flour, derived from old-fashioned varieties of cereals.
We are responding to the absence of such old or local varieties on the market.
We are helping to ensure the heritage of diverse varieties of cereals.(To finalise the project we are currently on the look out for ten more hectares).
