I don't think it's cliche to say that red really is the staff of life.
For thousands of years, everywhere humans have been, it's been that fundamental food.
I'm Don Lewis, and I am the owner and operator of a local food restaurant and local food
store here in Clinton Croners, New York.
We operate a commercial bakery completely on our own flour, and we run a sustainable
flour mill.
This sustainable project came about 12 years ago.
I met this farmer out in Earnhardt.
He had his little mill running, and he had some flour, and he said, well, here you're
a baker, maybe you can do something with this.
And I stuck my hand in it, and I just realized there was so much of a difference in it, the
way it felt, the way it smelled, the way it tasted.
Right away, I started to think that, well, this is the way it was.
This valley started growing grains in the 1600s during the Revolutionary War.
It was the bread basket of the United States.
This area was producing the best quality wheat for bread in any of the colonies.
Martha Washington, when her and George moved to Virginia, she had to have grains shipped
from here down to there so she could get a decent loaf of bread.
This whole Hudson River Valley is riddled with mill sites from 150 years ago, and they
were all milling local grains, that all disappeared.
Returning grains for human consumption to the valley, I'm excited about that, but changed
the way people think, even get them to think about where their food comes from or where
their services come from.
And this is one of the reasons why I started baking with local ingredients was that I understood
that it had to be in people's stomachs in order to understand the concept.
Digestion has a lot of comprehension in it.
It started really in the farmers markets in New York for me.
That's when I really realized that it was about my direct connection with the consumer.
It is whole wheat, it's a different variety of wheat.
I knew that people eventually would want to buy bread made with flour that was from grains
that were local.
They had to be taught that it is special and why it's special.
They would ask me, why should I spend that much money on that loaf of bread?
It's like wine to me.
When you eat bread made with local flour, you're getting nutrient density, you're getting tremendous
quality in the food itself.
But with that aside, just the fact that you get to taste your neighborhood.
Farmers making a choice to buy a loaf of bread made with local flour has a lot of power to
it.
It enables the consumer to directly affect their neighbors, whether it's the farmer
that grew the grain, the cleaner that cleaned it, the miller that milled it, the bakers
that baked it, the retailer that sold it, the distributor that brings it around.
By spending five bucks on a loaf of bread, they are affecting their whole neighborhood.
Bread power.
There's a lot there.
Thank you.
