FERGUS WALKER
PEOPLE POWERED FLOUR MILL
The People Powered Flour Mill is a bicycle-driven grain grinding mill designed to connect the community to its local food production.
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Its purpose is education and inspiration: children, parents, grandparents can all come and take part, they themselves providing that vital link between fields of wheat and loaves of bread.
The mill is simple to use: fill the hopper with grain, which is fed into the centre of the stones, and adjust the fineness with the adjusting wheel. Then, pedal the bicycle - connected to the mill with a flexible drive shaft which turns the bottom stone; flour falls into the collecting bucket below – and in about three minutes of energetic milling, you have enough flour for a large loaf!
Since flour loses nutrients within hours of being milled, putting the grinding nearer to the baking brings additional health benefits that are lost at a larger scale. With its flexible drive shaft, the mill could be plugged into any power source for more continuous milling.
Conversely, the bicycle could potentially power a range of appliances, essentially harnessing the calories wasted in fitness gyms and channelling them straight back into food production.
Flour to the people!
The mill was designed working with Fife-based Falkland Centre for Stewardship, through which the project won an award from O2 It’s Your Community for £1000, (where it was selected as one of 15 UK ‘Champions’). Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative also kindly came on board, donating a bicycle.
