When Meme Angchuk returned from the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Zanskar late this July, he helped us fix and clean up one of Tar’s water-powered grain mills, preparing it to grind this season’s wheat and roasted barley flour. It didn’t need much; we shoveled out the water canal that feeds the mill and re-installed the chute that sends water with force towards the wooden paddle wheel. When everything was ready, we carefully applied a new layer of fine clay to the basin around the millstone, where flour collects. Meme Angchuk told us that we should start the mill before the clay was fully dry, so that the first flour would bind with it and create a clean, smooth surface– a food offering to the earth. Once it’s dry, you never touch the basin with anything but a piece of sheepskin, so no clay can break and mix in with the flour. Caitlin went to direct water into the canal while Jason and Meme Angchuk watched the stone begin to turn and made fine adjustments, raising and lowering the stone with a mechanism controlled by a series of wooden wedges (over on the right side in the frame of the video below).
We ground what remained of the seed wheat we brought from Sabu to fill our pantry and keep us in bread until the fall, when our own fields will be ready to harvest.