Liz,

 

The organization that Elizabeth mentioned is called SPOOM (The Society for the Preservation of Old Mills).  Maybe the organization has changed since my time as a millwright, but my recollection is that the members of SPOOM tended to be “gear-heads” who focused on preservation and restoration as opposed to education per se.  That said you might find that they have a bunch of great ideas about educating the general public.  They are obsessed with mills after all…  You will definitely want to talk with Tom Kelleher at Old Sturbridge Village… he is a wealth of information about mill history.

 

Some ideas about how to make your tour of the mill interesting:

 

1. Do a hands-on workshop/program about water-power.  When I was at OSV, I ran a teacher workshop where the teachers built their own model waterwheels and tested them, calculated flow and horsepower (I think I used plastic soda bottles to control volume), etc.  We also compared the efficiency of undershot, overshot, breast-wheels, and reaction wheels.
2. Many visitors don’t really understand how the millstones work in a grist mill.  The best explanation is the one that compares the stones to a pair of scissors.  A visual aid that demonstrates that could be a nice addition to your program.  I’ve seen two Plexiglas circles with the mill dressing drawn on them.  When you turn one Plexi-stone over the other you can see this scissor action pretty clearly.
3. You might want to show the different products produced by a mill – fine vs. coarse grinds, wheat (I know not very popular in New England) vs. rye, vs. corn; superfine, fine, and middling grinds.  Touching should be allowed.
4. The story of the oat is pretty interesting – visitors are always curious when I told them that oats were for animals and Irishmen in the 1830s.  If you show them “ground” oats, they can see how unhealthful they would be to eat – all that bran… yuk!
5. Talk about the different parts of a grain and how the mill separates them into the edible and the non-edible parts.  This is a good time to talk about the nature of seeds and how they are designed to make a new plant.  Visuals are always popular.
6. If you can’t operate your mill, you can get a “quern” (a small version of millstones that are hand-powered) to show how the millstones make meal.
7. Lessons on gear ratios always make the bicycle riders and the math teachers in the audience happy.

 

That’s all I can remember for now… Hope this helps.