Can you help?

The details are vague, lost in the sands of family memory. But the mark remains—a dent, a line at the back of my head. It left my brain wired differently; it shaped how I think and how I see the world.

I grew up in a home where beauty and hardship lived side-by-side. And from that childhood, I learned two profound truths.

The first was the crushing impermanence of life. I had a brother, David, who died before I was born. My dad would say, “We only wanted two children. You would never have been born unless David had died.” It was a truth as stark as it was loving. From my very first breath, I understood that death is a shadow that follows us all. I saw how tragedy consumed my parents, especially my mum. It drilled a deep, lifelong hole of grief. That heaviness followed her everywhere. It was a lesson in how dwelling on death can make the tragedy itself more intense, more pure, and more leaden.

But the second thing I learned was the flip side of that coin: that life and death are intrinsically linked. That one gives meaning to the other.

This truth became crystal clear years later during my MSc in Sustainable Food Systems. In biology, I saw it everywhere: in the cupped hands of the soil, in the tree that sheds its leaf to feed new growth, in the beautiful, endless nutrient cycle. Life requires decay.

And that’s where I found wheat.

I learned about the power of a single grain of wheat. Its potential to transform. To be the start of something new, something powerful, something worth building a life upon. In that cycle of growth, harvest, and renewal, I saw the answer to the grief I’d witnessed. Not a denial of death, but a celebration of the life it makes possible.

That knowledge forged a determination in me—a dream to make that cycle of life not just a natural fact, but a business model.

This dream is why Fresh Flours exists.

It’s a dream to tackle the climate emergency head-on. To make people healthier from the ground up. To create a system where farmers are so well-paid and well-respected that the tragedy of suicide becomes a thing of the past. It’s a dream to rebuild communities around the most fundamental of things: the food we eat.

I dream of mills in towns and cities across the UK. I dream of transparent, obvious connections between you and the farmers who grow your food. I dream of a network powered by organic, biodiverse, low-till farming. I dream of flour, pasta, biscuits—products that nourish both body and soul.

But more than that, I dream of people. apprentices who will become owners. Individuals empowered with their own mills and machines, supported, trained, and loved by a central community—by us. This isn’t about building an empire. It’s about seeding a federation.

I have the determination. But I cannot do this alone.

I need support. Emotional, physical, and economic. I need people to hold us, to believe in us. To give us their time and, yes, their money. It sounds crass, but it’s the fuel in the engine of the world we currently live in. We need to use that engine to build a better one.

We need this to work for the next generation. The trace we leave must be one of community, togetherness, and determination—not greed, exploitation, and frivolousness.

So, I am asking you.

Get involved. Buy our products. Challenge us. Help us. Donate if you can.

Be part of this cycle. Help us turn a story of personal tragedy into a legacy of collective renewal.

With determination & hope,

Andrew
Founder, Fresh Flour collective