Daniel Saint-Pierre on bringing the buckwheat millstone assembly back into operation

Daniel Saint-Pierre: We rented a truck. As always, I drove. Off we went to Wakefield and we came back with the truck loaded with a bolter that weighed over a ton. The whole gang worked together to get it onto the truck. It’s amazing what you can do with a good group of people and a common goal. So we arrived back with the bolter, a pile of wooden boards and a whole lot of odds and ends. We were able to build our elevators using the old wood. Today, when you come into the mill, you see those elevators looking as if they come from another era, but they’re basically made from old wood salvaged from the other mill. Everybody pitched in. We rebuilt the elevators, the ramps so it would run properly, and that was no easy task. We took the bolter apart completely, cleaned it all up and disinfected it because we didn’t know where it had been. The whole bolter had to be disinfected, board by board. I remember Ernest helped with that — he came in for the day. We had rented pressure tools, food products, food disinfectants, all that stuff. So we took it all apart and then reassembled it. It’s been running since then, for 14 years or more. Today, we can produce flour at any time of the day –buckwheat on the right side of the mill, and wheat on the left. That solved a lot of production problems and really brought the mill back to life. That’s what I call it. Today, there are a few elderly folks – they’re getting more and more rare – who remember seeing one millstone assembly operating in the mill. Today, there are two. Sometimes, they’re still amazed that there are two millstones inside. They say: “Wow, I don’t remember that being there before.” No, it wasn’t there; back then, it was just a pair of stones that were found lying on the ground. But today it, it contributes an additional operation to the mill. It’s a lot of fun to see how this old landmark has been brought back to life because we provided it with a second millstone assembly. It’s operating more and more like it did in the past. For me, that’s quite remarkable.