Corn mill

“ Tibeats to a considerable amount in consideration of his services in building the mills on Indian Creek, and also a weaving-house, corn-mill and other erections on the plantation at Bayou Bœuf, not yet completed. ”

“ The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel, may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven by power for other purposes. ”

“ In the last chapter we have followed the growing of the wheat from seed time to harvest. But when the farmer has harvested his corn his troubles are by no means over. He has still to thrash it, dress it, sell it, and deliver it to the mill or to the railway station. In the good old times a hundred years ago thrashing was done by the flail, and found work during the winter for many skilled labourers. This time-consuming method has long disappeared. In this country all the corn is now thrashed by machines, driven as a rule by steam, but still in some places by horse-gearing. ”

“ On an average it shells and grinds from 6 to 10 bushels of corn per hour, and runs a 14 inch burr stone, grinding wheat at the same time. During strong winds it has shelled and ground as high as 30 bushels of corn per hour. Plate 2 is from a photograph of this mill and building as it stands. One bevel pinion is all the repairs this mill has required. ”

“ Or he can make a pioneer mill like Figs. 163 or 164, from a log. The pestle or masher in Fig. 164 is of iron.
Sweet Corn
There is a way to preserve corn which a few white people still practice just as they learned it from the Indians. First [105] they dig long, shallow trenches in the ground, fill them with dried roots and small twigs with which they make a hot fire and thus cover the bottom of the ditch with glowing embers. The outer husks of the fresh green corn are then removed and the corn placed in rows side by side on the hot embers (Fig. 167) . ”

“ The crop of peas pays for all the expense. We feed but little corn to our hogs.
Wheat is grown but little in this section. When cotton was worth twenty cents per pound no one would raise wheat, so the mills were either torn or rotted down, but in a short time there will be a mill to grind wheat in the vicinity. There are plenty of mills to grind corn. Nearly all the vegetables grown North do well here, and come into the market much earlier, and many that do not grow there do well here. ”

“ I suppose everyone has a desire to investigate, to explore into the past, and to relive some of our history and past traditions. This mill and its restoration has provided us an excellent opportunity to test our ability to do what the old folks did. They were able, with their crude tools, to build this mill and to actually make it grind corn in excellent fashion, even to the extent of doing a thriving business. It is interesting to reflect that they did not have the modern power tools available today, nor did they really have the time we have today, but these folks really built for permanence. ”

“ Ground in this manner, the corn apparently keeps the goodness and the natural nutrients of the grain. It is not processed and bleached to a point where it tastes like a blotter. It actually tastes like corn. We have also tried some of the wheat flour, and the bread made from it is something to be experienced.
Other restoration projects that come to mind are two or three windmills in Chatham and Eastham which have been restored or reproduced, and a few herring runs, but there are many other places and sites that are gradually going unless we all make some effort to preserve them. ”

“ But good corn bread, hommony, mush, and various other dishes cannot be made of flour ground too fine. For all ordinary purposes, the common mill employed for grinding wheat, answers equally well for grinding maize. When it is required to grind the corn coarse, it is necessary only to elevate the uppermost stone and increase its speed ”

“ The only mill for many miles is the corn-cannery. Corn-husking always brings farm neighbors together; sweet corn, for canning, is husked in August, fodder corn in late October. Families come to husk for each other, and the wide barn floors where they sit are piled high with husks; but in the districts near a cannery, as here, the whole community gathers. In good weather the work is all done out of doors, and the laughing and chatting groups, men, women, and children, sit up to their waists in husks. ”

“ Prescott his heyres and assignes vntil the 23d of May, in the yeare of our Lord sixteen hundred sixty and two."
The corn mill was located a little lower upon the brook than the extensive factory buildings now utilizing its water power. The half used force of the rapid stream, and the giant pines of the virgin forest then shadowed all the region about, were full of reproach to the restless miller. His busy brain was soon planning a new benefaction to his fellow citizens, and when his means grew sufficiently to warrant the enterprise, his busy hands wrought its consummation. ”

“ The modern corn and flour mill differs from the primitive hand-mill in the size of the stones, in the addition of an apparatus for separating the hulls and bran from the farinaceous part of the grain, and in the power applied for putting it in motion. ”

“ The "Quern" is a hard stone roughly rounded, and partly hollowed, into which another stone, which has a handle, is loosely fitted. The corn required to be ground is placed in the hollow receptacle, and the inner stone is moved rapidly round, and, in course of time, by immense labour, the wheat &c. is ground into flour. The Scripture prophecies mention that of two women grinding at the mill, one shall be left, and the other taken—the two-handled mill will explain the meaning of this passage. ”

“ Water and air constitute the entire aliment of vegetables, and give them bulk without diminishing at all the quantity of soil in which they grow. The perfection of feeding corn consists in preserving the cob, grinding the whole into meal, and in the cookery. The iron mill is excellent, but too expensive for most farmers. What is wanting, then, is to have the corn, with its cob, powdered by some cheap and simple method, that every one may avail themselves of. ”

“ Yet the untrained mountain man seeing a stream gushing down a steep escarpment knows how to divert it to his own best use.
Sometimes he set his tub mill, or the wheel, at the most advantageous point to grind his corn into meal. If, however, his house happened to be near no stream he had a simpler method for grinding his corn, a way his forbears learned from the Indian, or heard about through his Scotch ancestors. ”

“ When the corn is sufficiently boiled, and the woman is ready to grind it, she takes it from the pot, and places it on the stone, under which she has spread a mat. She then kneels at the mill, takes the stone in both hands, and with a peculiar rocking and grinding motion reduces it to a tolerably consistent paste. As fast as it is ground, it is forced down the sloping side of the stone, upon a skin which is ready to receive it. ”

“ The walls of the mill are of undressed poles cut from seedling trees and there is no floor, as lumber is dear. No dam is built. The water is conveyed along some hillside until sufficient fall is obtained, a thing easily done in the mountains.
On Sundays you may see wild, unshorn, uncombed men coming out of the woods, each with a bag of corn on his back. From a peck to a bushel is a common grist. They go to the mill along verdant footpaths, winding up and down over hill and valley, and crossing many a rhododendron glen. ”

“ He had been here two years; has now one hundred acres under fence; raised the present season fifteen hundred bushels of corn, three hundred of wheat; has seventy head of neat cattle and sixty hogs. He has a fine timber lot near his house, in which is an abundance of the sugar maple. He had killed, the present season, four beef cattle, the last one just before I called upon him; and fatter and better flavored beef I never saw. All the cattle grow exceedingly fat on [Pg 69] the prairie grass; so much so that corn will add nothing to it. A saw and grist mill are within seven miles of him. ”

“ The farmer was again overcome with fear, and begged another fortnight to think of it. So his friends were called together again, and at last gave this advice; that the foreman should be sent and made to grind corn by night at the haunted mill, whence no man had ever yet come out in the morning alive. That very evening he was told to carry eight bushels of corn to the mill, and grind them in the night. Away he went to the loft, put two bushels into his right pocket, two into his left, and four into a long sack slung over his shoulders, and then set off to the mill. ”

“ We had expected to cultivate our eight acres, and, in fact, when spring came we did put in a crop of corn; but the making of the mill and providing ourselves with food occupied so much of our time that we could not well afford to spend many hours as farmers, more particularly since both Uncle Daniel and Captain Haskell insisted that as soon as the mill was in working order we could earn double or treble as much as it would be possible to get from the ground. ”

“ It requires the examination only of a single principle, a principle very well understood, and indeed thus far not very difficult to understand, to see that the nature of the farmer's business is altogether different, and is in this respect most remarkably distinguished from all other trades.
It is very extraordinary that the persons who have pretended to dictate laws on this subject have never reflected that corn is a peculiar commodity; that it has relations different from those of any other commodity which man possesses ”

“ No one however will hesitate to allow all that is necessary for our argument, that the tendency of the species to multiply is much greater than the rapidity with which there is any chance that the fruits of the earth will be multiplied in Britain, or any other country in Europe, What is the consequence of this great law of society, but that the production of corn creates the market for corn? ”

“ Well, for one thing, you ought to have a first-class manure spreader; it will do the work much quicker, and save you many backaches—now that you've decided to fertilize heavily. Then you should have a good power-driven corn sheller and a small mill for grinding corn meal and buckwheat flour. You also ought to have a one and a half horsepower kerosene engine, mounted on a portable hand truck. ”

“ For very exact and special kinds of meal, the Kibbling-mill is preferable, in many respects, as the size and uniformity of the grits can be regulated at pleasure by an indifferent hand; whereas, in the common mill for grinding wheat, their degree of fineness or coarseness, depends entirely on the judgment and skill of the miller by regulating the position and velocity of the uppermost stone, and a due attention to feeding in the grain. ”

“ In order the more completely to confine our attention to these last, it is convenient to assume that all commodities but the one in question remain invariable in their relative values. When we are considering the causes which raise or lower the value of corn, we suppose that woollens, silks, cutlery, sugar, timber, &c., while varying in their power of purchasing corn, remain constant in the proportions in which they exchange for one another. ”

“ New England and New Jersey farms, generally speaking, no longer attempt the culture of grains, but (when driven out of that culture by the great railway lines which have opened up the West) they have arranged themselves in a scale of adaptability for stock, grass, fruit, dairy, or vegetable farming; and have thereby given greater profits to their owners than the same land did under the old régime. Even on lands where any grain can still be grown, corn, buckwheat, barley, oats, and rye, cover the cultivated areas instead of wheat. ”

“ If, for example, a path leads through or by the side of a field of grain, the corn is not, as in England, permitted to hang over the path, exposed to be pulled or trodden down by every passer by; it is everywhere bounded by a fence, stakes are placed at intervals of about a yard, and, about two, or three feet from the ground, boughs of trees are passed longitudinally along. If you look into a field towards evening, where there are large beds of cauliflower or cabbage, you will find that every single plant has been watered. ”

“ The grist mill represents a striking evolution in the process of satisfying the hunger of man. The Indians pounded corn in a hollowed rock which was a crude mortar. Peasants all over the globe performed the same kind of service to obtain flour from wheat. It was the earliest hand power era. The Puritans, Cavaliers and Pilgrims probably obtained their first grist in this way. They were familiar with the use of grinding stones in Europe, so it was not long before the grist mill sprang up in the first clearings. ”

“ Though it may be perfectly certain, from theory, what kind of effects corn laws must produce, and in what general direction their influence must tell upon industrial prosperity, their effect is yet of necessity so much disguised by the similar or contrary effects of other influencing agents, that specific experience can at most only show that on the average of some great number of instances, the cases where there were corn laws exhibited the effect in a greater degree than those where there were not. ”