Jerilyn has been bringing her passion for real food to our table since we milled our first batch of flour in 2016. It started at a meeting of the women's culinary leadership organization, Les Dames d'Escoffier. “The last person to speak stepped up to the mic, and he was a farmer,” she remembers. “He looked like he had just climbed off his tractor, and he said, 'Hey everybody, I'm Kevin Morse. I'm opening a new business stone-grinding grains in the Skagit Valley.' I felt my heart leap in my chest. I'd dreamed of a stone mill in the Skagit Valley and here it was!”

When Kevin brought her some fresh flour to try, Jerilyn says she was “bowled over by the aroma, the vitality of the loaves—the flavor and experience of being nourished by these incredible grains. It felt like the Hallelujah chorus. The flavor was so incredible. These grains are truly extraordinary. Their natural character is preserved—no enhancements, no chemicals to change them or alter their natural nourishing character. They're just out of the earth and out of the love of the farmer. It's a kind of purity. It's almost magical.

“I think it's an eternal flame in me that baking is a way of connecting with grains that have just been harvested from the earth. And a huge piece of it is this community—to have the gift of being able to know the flour, know the farmer who plants the grain, tends it, harvests it, trucks it to the mill. There's so much to discover. So I consider it a tremendous gift to be a member of the team moving to increase the economy for farmers, the opportunities for nutrition for families, and the opportunities for bakers to have more nutritious, beautiful grains that create gorgeous products. It's really incredible.”