Father and daughter team grow and mill Ohio grains.
Alex Dragovich and his daughter Alexis Dragovich operate Mud Run Farm Organics in Ohio. What began as a homestead is now a 30-acre organic grain farm that mills and markets their flour direct to consumers, selling at farmers’ markets and on-farm.
Alex and Alexis use horses along with mechanized equipment to grow small grains like oats, wheat, spelt and einkorn. They buy some grain from nearby farms to augment their offerings and increase opportunities for their neighbors to grow food-grade grains for local markets. Alex and Alexis are active members of their community, and strong voices for the environmental advantages of organic and sustainable farming. As is true for many small farmers, an off-farm income is needed to make their operation work.
Alex was a long-time union carpenter. Initially, he farmed nights and weekends while working construction, running a very small dairy and growing food for the family. When he retired about 20 years ago, he stretched their home garden into a two-acre market garden, thinking that growing and selling vegetables would be a good project to spend more time with the family.
Alexis is thankful for a supportive husband and a full-time job in regulatory agriculture that allows flexibility for her farming and milling work. Her previous career in logistics is less applicable to her day-to-day work on the farm, but brought her to a job she loves. The second of four kids, she was six months old when the family moved to the farm.
“We were all in 4-H but I’m the only one that farms. I was actually the one that wanted to move to New York and do the corporate thing,” said Alexis. Ten years ago, she quit and came home for a summer that’s never stopped. At the time, Alex was farming vegetables and grains.
“My dad had a friend that was the manager at our local farmers market and asked if he ever thought about milling flour because that's something that was lacking in the region,” said Alexis. Direct marketing appealed to them because Alex had experience selling at the farmers’ market, and they enjoyed the connections. At first, they had their grain cleaned and milled elsewhere, but Mud Run’s small needs didn’t fit in the larger farm’s operation. If they were out of cornmeal, and only needed 100 lbs ground, they would have to wait. This made the need for setting up their own system apparent.
Alex’s construction skills served the farm well as they kitted out their self-funded milling operations in 2020, which is a certified organic facility. Not only does Alex have the physical building know-how, but he’s well-versed in working with local authorities to comply with regulatory codes. Further, they had similar-scale models to emulate in nearby Mennonite and Amish farms that were already handling grains.
“We talked to folks in our area to see how big we needed the room and things like that, and found somebody who had an Ostiroller mill for sale. And then we found a Meadows Mill in the paper, and we built everything around those two machines,” said Alex. The Meadows is exclusively used for corn, and the Ostiroller mills everything else fresh for market.
“We try to never come home with flour and store it,” said Alexis. There are a few retail outlets that stock their flour, but the majority of what they make is handed directly to the customer. “We don’t have anything that goes out on a palette. We don’t work with restaurants or bakeries, and that fits with the batches of grains we grind. From one mill day to the next, the grains are different. Home customers do okay with that kind of variation, but bakeries need more consistency.”
Next on their horizon is cleaning and dehulling. They have a dehuller, but it is not set up yet; they’re still relying on outside help – which means hauling, plus the expense of custom handling. They currently use a small air screen cleaner, to prep crops for milling, but Alex is working on plans to fit out a part of a larger equipment shed and dedicate it to processing. This will enable them to clean and dehull spelt, einkorn, and oats themselves, as well as have equipment available for cleaning and dehulling crops from other farmers in their network.
The two enjoy being a part of AGC, and expanding their connections in regional grains. Alexis participated in a cohort of Midwest GRIT and is now part of Michigan Agriculture Advancement’s Women in Grains: Rooted in Resilience program.
“Any time I can meet people working with grains, I’m really excited for it,” she said. “Although I wish more events happened in Ohio!”
AGC agrees, and is glad to have such energetic folks aboard!
Alexis on the Thriving Farmer Podcast
