I’m a sucker for old buildings and old things. Especially when they demonstrate human ingenuity. This old Grain Mill is a shining example of the practical decision making required to transport, store, bag and sell feed.
The building was built for the single purpose of storing grain. The grain bins covered the breadth and depth of the entire building and stood over 15 feet high. Each bin held a different kind of grain.
After we removed the walls of the grain bins, you could see the size of each bin and also the steel rods that were connected to each side of the building and acted as stabilizers to hold the building square.
The belts and buckets, the motors and wheels, the storage areas and augers …. All combined to create a way to house and move grain as needed.
Inside the wooden housing, a belt with scoops attached pulled grain from one area of the building to another.
Of course, sometimes there were hiccups. It seems that soybeans are particularly “sticky” and they had a tendency to get clogged, making it difficult to add soybeans to the feed mixture. The workers at the Mill had a simple answer: they used a stick to bang on the floor of the grain bin, from the ceiling in the room below, shaking the beans loose so that the feed could be mixed. We still have the stick they used and we left the damage in the ceiling that shows exactly where the beans were stored.
The molasses in the basement and the grain from the upper bins had to be moved to the mixer on the main floor. All that work to bag feed for local horses, cows and other farm animals!
This grain mixer was housed on the first floor of the building. Grain was moved from the storage bins into the mixer and combined with other ingredients to create animal feed.
Today we create food of a different kind here in the old mill. Come on by and have a piece of freshly made pie!
