Tegner Mill Brings Heritage-Grown Wheat to You
In which I revisit some favorite news pieces from 2024.
Originally published in the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch on October 8, 2024. The Waterford News is part of MidValley Publications - committed to the power of the positive press. Reprinted with Permission.
Natalie Wilson is a real estate agent with a passion for marketing. On their modern homestead, which includes a picturesque farmhouse, small fruit grove, pastures for cows, horses, chickens, and cats, and raised flower beds overflowing with a rainbow of color, there stands a small moss-green cinderblock barn behind the white farmhouse with the words “This must be the place.”
After driving south down Tegner Road, nearly to Hilmar, those are just the words that come to mind. “This must be the place.”
Natalie and Josh Wilson are now millers of heritage grains. For Christmas, John bought Natalie a countertop mill. While rehabbing from her broken ankle, Natalie created the website and played with the mill, falling in love with the process and the quality.
In May, Josh brought an 8-inch Meadows Mill, a stone mill unique for its vertical design. With it, they could mill 50 lbs of flour a day. When they launched Tegner Mill on August 10, orders for over 500 lbs of flour came in within three days. They would have to mill around the clock to make it happen.
So, the two invested in a 20-inch Meadows Mill, able to mill 300 lbs an hour. “Without it, we wouldn’t have survived,” Natalie says both lightheartedly and in earnest as she tells their story with the same marked enthusiasm common to her Portuguese heritage.
For the first ten days, they milled “every day, most of the day,” she said. After that first week, they’ve got the swing of things, although hiccups still happen, requiring a screwdriver and an hour or so of patience.
They’re milling quicker and receiving orders locally and beyond, including 500 lbs to Dream Inn in Santa Cruz and Ad Astra Bread Co. in Monterey.
Milling wasn’t a dream the couple grew up with. Josh is a full-time firefighter for Merced Fire Department. Natalie is a realtor. But after a season of selling beef and seeing the challenge facing farmers who pour themselves into the work, without extra time or resources to market their products locally, Natalie began asking the question, “How do you connect people?”
For the Wilsons, the answer was the mill.
“My dad came from Portugal. He has vivid memories of my grandmother going to the mill and picking up their wheat. There were thousands of stone mills in the U.S. a hundred years ago. Bringing them back local is my vision,” Natalie said.
And with grains grown in Waterford and Hilmar, picked up on Tegner Road, and baked locally by artisan bakers, home enthusiasts, busy moms, and local bakeries, “It doesn’t leave the county. That’s tremendous.”
The Wilsons purchase wheat from Eck Farms in Hilmar, where John Eck farms 38 acres of heritage wheat, and Covered Bridge Farms in Waterford, whose 5 acres are spent on even rarer varieties.
“These grains, with their rich histories and unique flavors, offer a remarkable experience that modern wheat varieties often lack,” Natalie writes on her website. She tells the stories of the Spanish missionaries bringing White Sonora Wheat to California, of this Duram Iraq coming from the fertile crescent, the kind they would have baked at the time of Christ. Tegner Mill also sells Joaquin Oro, Yecora Rojo, Rouge de Bordeaux, and Abburizzi Rye. Some are held back for the farmers to sow their next crop. Others, available in smaller amounts, are added to the pancake mix.
Like the Wilson’s themselves, with historical roots in cattle ranching in Columbia and farming sweet potatoes and watermelons in the Central Valley, the value of heritage, connection to the land and history, permeates the business of Tegner Mill.
Everything is 100% whole wheat. She shows children on a field trip the separated bran they fed to their cattle that morning. The students are invited to compare the colors, textures and smells of the flour and grain berries Natalie shows them.
She explains, “Industrial whole wheat flour is produced using high-speed, high-temperature roller milling. This process separates the bran, germ, and endosperm before recombining them, often generating heat that can diminish some nutritional content. Stone-milled whole-grain flour, on the other hand, is made using a slower, gentler process that grinds the entire grain together, preserving all the natural nutrients and oils.”
Flour milled at Tegner Mill is shelf-stable for up to six months after it’s milled. One daughter stamps the “Best By” dates on each bag as another daughter sews the bags shut. Their son fetches a band-aid for Josh after he finishes a repair. They are teenagers and preteens who rock climb, do rodeos, and now help in the family business.
Tegner Mill flours are packaged and sold as All-Purpose Flour, Bread Flour, Pastry Flour, Whole Rye Flour and Pasta Flour. Natalie hopes to add pizza mixes to their selection. “My goal is to have more mixes. I think it is important to make it accessible and available for everybody despite your time constraints or capabilities, to make sure people can buy it and buy wholesome foods,” Natalie said.
Five-pound bags are $10 each, and 50-lb bags are $80 for those buying bulk. Tegner Mill will be at local farmer’s markets, including the November 25 Pageo Lavender Holiday Market and the December 7 Bethlehem Market. Plans are underway to create flat-rate shipping and have it in stock at Mazzeltov Farms Soap in Waterford.
Flour purchases can also be picked up on Wednesdays at the Mill Room at 4313 S. Tegner Rd, Turlock, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
When Natalie tells people what they do, she says they are perplexed. “Most of us in our lifetime just went to the store. There was no connection.”
By connecting the farmer to the mill, the mill to the baker, and the baker to the market, the Wilsons hope to change that, one bag of flour at a time.
For more information on the mill and its projects, visit tegnermill.com.The cost for a one-year subscription to the Hughson Chronicle & Denair Dispatch or Waterford News is $89. The newspaper is delivered weekly through USPS. For a weekly dose of print media with positive, local stories, and written by humans, subscribe by calling our main office, MidValley Publications (209) 358-5311.