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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Andrew H. Talkov
Exhibition Coordinator for Virginia’s Civil War Sesquicentennial
Virginia Historical Society
428 N. Boulevard
P.O. Box 7311
Richmond, Virginia 23221-0311
Phone: 804-340-2276
Fax: 804-342-9697
Email: [log in to unmask]