Cairnspring Mills co-founder Kevin Morse explains why building something meaningful takes grit and patience.

Kevin Morse is on a mission to prove that a food business can be profitable while “adding value rather than extracting it.” As CEO and co-founder of Cairnspring Mills, he’s building modern mills in farming communities, buying identity-preserved grain from farmers and stone-milling it into exceptional flour. After more than a decade in the Skagit Valley, he’s opening Blue Mountain Mill in Pendleton, Oregon, with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Below, he shares why wheat is a lot like wine, how his perfect site was the last place he looked and why slow, expensive dreams demand grit.

What makes your product different?
Wheat can be a lot more like wine grapes than most people realize and certainly not what I expected when I started diving into this business. I thought that wheat and flour were all the same. What I discovered totally surprised me.

Most bakers have never had access to the diversity that actually exists in wheat. We’re trying to change that. We work with farmers to grow specific varieties, preserve their identity from the farm through the mill, and bring grains to market that previously weren’t available to most professional or home bakers.

We also stone-mill our flour to preserve more of the natural flavor and nutrition of the grain. Of course, it still has to perform. A professional baker has to be able to depend on our flour every day.

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