Dedrick Farms

Matt Dedrick (p: 607-327-1167, e: mdedrick@twcny.rr.com) owns Dedrick Farms in Lansing. Since March, 2009, Dedrick has made pellets out of a variety of materials from his farm, including: sunflower hulls and stalks, corn stalks, hay, rice crop, cleanings from corn, and oats. Out of these materials he has found that corn stalks work the best as far as durability. Oats, however, are harder to pelletize and had to be ground up very finely. He has made about 100 lbs of hay pellets, and gave samples out to the public. They burned very hot, probably hotter than wood pellets. In addition to the materials he has tried, he intents to try making wood pellets, as a neighbor of his had a sawmill. He has both an indoor corn pellet stove, which does not like higher ash content, and an outdoor American Royal Grain Boiler.

He has not sold any of his pellets, and the majority of those he has made have been burned in his own stove. He would like to build another mill to double capacity, but the hardest place is finding a place for the pellets to cool and dry. His current equipment consists of a small Chinese pellet mill, two rollers from PelletPros, and a die from PelletPros. He did some modifications and purchased an eight inch steel pipe for outside casing. He spent $300 for the die and rollers, and $60-70 for other materials. Everything else was old material, including an electric motor that was made from old farm equipment.

Maintenance costs, according to Dedrick, would just be replacing the $300 equipment, which is supposed to happen every couple hundred hours (he hasn't yet). The biggest problem, he says, is if foreign material gets in. He needs electricity to run the motor, but says the equipment can run off a farm tractor or electric motor. Questions regarding this business can be asked through the forum website http://www.iburncorn.com/

Last updated June 6, 2018