On day ten of our trip, we went to Mountain Mama Milling as our first stop. This was in Monte Vista, Colorado owned by the Gosar family. It is a total of 670 acres purchased in 1970 by Mr. and Mrs. Gosar as an alfalfa, wheat and sheep farm. It was the second organically certified farm in the state of Colorado. Eventually they just became a wheat farm growing their own wheat and sending it off to a mill in Denver. They did this for about ten years when Mrs. Gosar wanted to start to expand their business when she got involved in a local art festival. They thought of many things that would help them make more money and settled on making sausages as the grandfather had many old recipes for it. They built a USDA certified facility to package and sell various types of sausages for the festivals and have continued to do it since. They make a variety of sausages and cater them to events or restaurants. The casing of their sausages is made out of pig intestines. This makes it all natural and healthier. Gosars has a contract with local growers to by their pig butts in order to make the sausage. With their facility they can produce 2,500 lbs. a week which equals out to 10,000 links.
Their next business change was building a larger mill on their property so they could mill their own wheat, cutting out that middleman and increasing their profits. They now have farmers growing wheat for them and then they bring it onto their facility to clean, store and mill. Chris Gosar took us through and showed us each step of the cleaning and milling process.
The first machine the wheat goes through is called a clipper cleaner. This separates the good wheat from super fine things and super large things that should not be there. It uses a shaker and screen system to sift it out. The large things like wheat stalk and peas got reused and turned into chicken feed and sold to local farmers. This helps them waste less and add to their income.
The second machine is called a Carter disc separator. This got wheat sized things out that are still unusable in the flower making process. These extra pieces were also turned into chicken feed.
The last cleaner was called the stoner. When combines harvest wheat in the fields they may occasionally go over bumps and make the combine hit the ground and collect rocks. This machine got the rocks out that are the same size and weight as the wheat.
Once the wheat was cleaned it gets sorted by protein percentage. The ideal percentage in bread wheat is 11-13%. In order to increase protein, the wheat must get stressed while out in the field like climate and weather changes. This corresponds with gluten in bread, the higher amount of protein means a higher amount of gluten. The high protein flour they produce is only good for bread making, not pastries like pies and cookies.
Inside the mill the flour goes down a chute and runs between two stones that grind the wheat. One stone stays still while the other moves in a circle, the width between the stones can be changed to how fine or coarse they want the flour. While this happens, the bean falls off, but sifting boxes catch it, and they reincorporate it into the flour to keep it whole wheat. Their flour products include whole wheat, cracked wheat, flour, bran, sifted flour, spelt (whole and ground) and rye.
Mountain Mama Milling has partnerships with companies all the way from Santa Fe to Cortez and Colorado Springs. They sell to niche markets like bakeries, small restaurants, and grocers. Each time they sell it is a 50 lbs. bag of whatever flour variety they want.
It was amazing to learn so many new things from this family company and we want to thank Chris Gosar for giving us the tour today!
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