Rural Heritage October/November 2025

not forget the great noon meal that comes with the harvest! As I walked around the grounds thinking about all the potential uses for a small combine, I thought about the opportunity to raise old varieties of wheat spelt and other small grains. These grains could be grown on small farms, perhaps in almost garden sized plots. A small machine could get in and around making short work of the harvest for these value added type crops. The grains could be milled into flour or sold as whole grains to consumers, but first they must be harvested. These small, handy sized machines would work well in this setting. I was pondering all of this when I stumbled upon Andy Helmuth. He and his family manufacture the “Freedom” grain mill. This is a very simple home-sized hammer mill. The machine is well made. It comes with three different sized screens. You can even get a small cabinet for the machine to sit on. The cabinet holds a 5-gallon bucket and keeps the flour or corn meal dust inside the cabinet instead of mom’s kitchen. Powered by a five-horsepower motor (washing machine size) and belt or perhaps fit with a flex-shaft? The Freedom Grainmill is a home-sized hammer mill that can handle a wide variety of small grains with three different sized screens. It deposits the milled flour or meal into a bucket located in the cabinet below the mill.

ground from blow over or sloppy winnowing inside the machines? It is attention to the details that make these small machines desirable and perform so well. One similarity that both machines have is the lack of a “grain bin” to hold the harvested grains. A team and wagon are needed to walk behind the machine, sort of like how modern-day grain carts are used. I understand the thinking behind the lack of a bin, but I also know how hard it would be for a farmer working alone to harvest his crop. Perhaps this is the key to community thinking? I can’t harvest my grain alone. This requires me to help my neighbors and they, in turn, help me. Let’s take it a step further and say a group of farmers purchase the combine together, spreading the cost and the workload over several families. Each has a vested interest in the machine’s care and maintenance needs. Each one is a bit dependent upon the other for economic help as well as physical labor. Much like the threshing rings from days gone by, the sense and need of community will still bring neighbors together to get the crops in. Oh, and let’s

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