Sarah Strautman (left) and Erin Dancey are owners of Living Sky Farms. (Submitted photo/Erin Dancey)

By Alice McFarlane

Making Bread

Friendship grows into a flour business

Apr 7, 2020 | 4:30 PM

Erin Dancey and Sarah Stautman became friends through their shared love of agriculture, raising animals, growing food, and gardening.

Their entrepreneurial spirit pushed them to start a business from their shared love of baking.

The idea for Living Sky Farms at Birch Hills started three months ago. It’s been just over two weeks since Dancey and Stautman started selling whole grain flour, flaked grains, sour dough starter, golden flax and flour mills.

Stautman was experimenting with milling her own grains and Dancey was making sourdough.

“We had the ability to have food grade seed cleaned and we figured a lot of other people would want it as well. We decided to start Living Sky Farms. We got a commercial mill with a little processing plant, an old seed cleaning plant, and started with fresh milled flour,” Stautman told farmnewsNOW. “We hope to educate people on whole grains and try to keep as much nutrients as we can in the food we’re eating.”

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Stautman said the Living Sky Farms philosophy of nothing added, nothing removed makes their products different from items found in a grocery store.

“With both of us being farmers, we get to experience whole foods straight from the source. I think right now there’s a disconnect between the foods most people are able to find on the shelves and where they’re sourced,” Stautman said. “We put the grain in the mill and we put everything that comes out of that mill into the bag. There is nothing removed from that flour.”

Stautman said the flour on store shelves has been sifted to remove the wheat germ and bran, which are two parts of the wheat that contain a significant amount of nutrients.

“When you get a standard white flour in the store, whether it’s bleached or unbleached, you are just getting the endosperm which does contain a lot of the protein and the carbs, but again, it’s missing a lot of the nutrients and vitamins most beneficial to us in consuming the product.”

Living Sky Farms sources their grains for milling from Tomtene Seed Farm near Brancepeth.

“They have a CFIA approved facility for food grade seed cleaning, so we source it locally. We have looked at a couple of neighboring organic farms because we know we’d like to offer both options as well.” Stautman explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge sales of baking items. When you walk through the grocery store and down the baking aisle there’s a lot of missing items.

Dancey, who makes her own sourdough, said supplies can be limited or sporadic.

“I’m grateful that I have this wild yeast. We tried to order some yeast in Prince Albert, and they were sold out. They could have some more now. I’ve tried to make bagels, pizza dough, all these different things that even for myself, I don’t do on a regular basis,” Dancey said. “We’ve noticed as well, friends on social media saying look at my buns that I’ve made, or I’ve done this or that. It’s unfortunate that you can’t find everything that you need, or you have to limit your outings.”

Stautman said the pandemic has given people more time in the kitchen.

“We get so busy when life is going at full speed. We’re having this opportunity to be able to slow down and really get back to those roots and find the joy,” Stautman said. “I think for a lot of people, it’s finding out how easy it is. It’s not hard to make bread or buns, it takes a little bit of time, a little bit of attention. But it’s not hard and a lot of people can get put off by the fear of yeast. Sometimes there’s a lot of things that you need to be cautious of like the temperature and humidity and but it’s really not that hard. I’m really, really excited to see everybody getting involved in baking. It’s so nice to see and it’s just wonderful.”

In an era of social distancing, Dancey said they are offering delivery of their products to communities in the area.

“When we talked about this process of launching our business there were a lot of little hiccups. We realized it didn’t make sense for us to hold off any longer as we could offer a service and a product to our local community,” Dancey said. “There’s pick ups available in Birch Hills all the time, just because that’s where we’re near. We’re doing delivery service to Kinistino, Melfort, Prince Albert and Saskatoon. We have specific days that we try to do that. People can pay us in advance, and we drop it off at their house on their doorstep, so we eliminate any contact.”

In addition to the grain products, Living Sky Farms has partnered with KoMo Mills from Germany. Whole grains have a much longer shelf life than whole grain flours. Bakers can have the option of milling their own grains in their own home.

“We absolutely love them. The goal is if you can mill your own grains, that’s the freshest and the closest you can get to farm fresh. If you want to do your own milling, then people have the option to do that,” Dancey said. “We can be reached through the contact page at www.livingskyfarms.ca, call or text 306-230-8624. We’re on Instagram and Facebook page as well, where we share our knowledge and our experiments, whether they’re wins or loses.”

Dancey said starting a business during physical distancing has been unusual.

“We’ve been joking with a lot of people ‘we can’t wait to meet you when this is all over’ because obviously we want to develop relationships with the people who are using our products.”

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alice.mcfarlane@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @AliceMcF