As national demand for flour skyrockets in the face of a lockdown home-baking bonanza, a one-man operation at a traditional water-powered Orkney mill is helping keep the country fed.

Birsay’s Barony Mill is thought to be the UK’s sole producer of beremeal, the flour created from bere - an ancient form of barley grown in the islands since Neolithic times and often called the ‘Viking grain’, thanks to its popularity with Orkney’s Norse settlers.

The mill, which normally ceases production in the spring before opening as a summer tourist attraction, has been inundated with internet orders for its 1.5kg bags of beremeal over the past few weeks.

The Barony Mill in Birsay, Orkney



“Before the lockdown we were getting maybe five or six orders a week,” says miller Ali Harcus, Barony’s sole paid employee . “It’s now jumped up to between 80 and 100 orders a week and it’s going all over the UK, from London to Stromness.”

Although best known as the vital component in Orkney bere bannocks, beremeal has lately been experiencing something of a renaissance as a speciality ingredient, one finding its way into everything from biscuits and craft vinegar, to gin, whisky and beer.

Some of the local products made using beremeal



This increased interest has been welcomed by the Birsay Heritage Trust, which operates the mill, but nobody could have predicted the positive impact a national health crisis would have on a well-loved, but niche Orcadian product.

“Folk are going online because of the lack of flour in the shops, finding ours and trying it,” says Ali, who has been miller at Barony for the past three years. “I got a shock the first week it happened. We do orders twice a week and had 50-something on the Tuesday and 40-odd on the Friday.

“The woman in the Dounby Post Office looked at me in a funny way when I first came in with the orders,” he laughs. “We have an arrangement now where I just put the orders in the back door with the money for postage and leave it all so they can go through them during the day. I pick up the empty boxes the next day.”