Josh Suppan started Fat Chance Farmstead in 2013, concentrating on a small vegetable CSA and eventually adding pick-your-own strawberries. In 2021, Josh planted his first crop of rye with the intention of milling it into flour. Today, the farm supplies multiple bakeries, grocery stores and households throughout eastern Ontario with their whole flour needs.

Join us for this field day for an in-depth tour and conversation about small-scale on-farm grain growing and milling and learn about EFAO’s Small Grains Program and how it might be able to support your grain-growing interests and curiosities.

A bit about the grain at Fat Chance Farmstead:

Fat Chance grows two varieties of grain: Red Fife wheat and rye. The grain is harvested with the use of a combine from the 1950’s and is both powered and pulled by a tractor as it cannot operate on it’s own. It is significantly smaller than modern combines making the number of acres you can harvest limited, but since 100% of the grain grown at Fat Chance is either replanted or milled into flour to be sold in the community, it works. After harvest, the grain is milled using a mill from Tyrol in Austria. It uses two large millstones to crush the “berries” into flour making either “whole grain” flour or it can then be sent through the sifting machine to make a finer “sifted” flour by separating the different parts of the berry (bran, germ, and endosperm).

EFAO’s Small Grains Network is funded and supported by the Weston Family Foundation’s Soil Health Initiative.