Barker's Creek Grist Mill
by Priscilla Burgers
Title
Barker's Creek Grist Mill
Artist
Priscilla Burgers
Medium
Photograph - Photography- Digital Art
Description
Image is a digital painting of Barker's Creek Grist Mill, located in Rabun Gap in northeast Georgia. Dogwood trees in bloom add interest to the scene. Part of the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences., Barker's Creek Mill has been providing the local community with milling services since the mid 1800s. Mary Hambidge built the current mill in 1944 at the site of an older mill that served the community since the first white settlers came into the area in the late 1820s.
Barker's Creek Mill is still operated by Hambidge on the first Saturday of each month from 1p.m. to 4 p.m. and by appointment to provide milling services to area farmers. Volunteer miller, Woody Malot (also a Physics instructor in Rabun Gap) demonstrates the workings of this historic gristmill and is happy to answer any questions. Members of Woody's family have been mill operators and builders since the 1750s. The mill sits in the upper end of the horseshoe shaped valley that is the beginning of Barker's Creek. It is powered by a 12-foot overshot wheel set on babbet bearings. It was converted from a wooden spoked, steel rimed wheel to the current metal spokes in the 1960's. The mill has been renovated three times in its life, the most recent in the late 1980's. The mill itself is a vertical mill with two 16" flint/granite stones. It was built by the Meadow's Milling Company in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. For the millers, milling is a past time and a passion.
Grits and cornmeal stone ground at the mill from locally grown corn can be purchased in the Hambidge Center's Weave Shed Gallery or at the mill on first Saturdays. The corn for grits and meal is locally grown hybrid yellow and a non-hybrid white corn that is a variety unchanged in the local valley since early settlers brought it in. The white "Keener" corn is a hard, open pollinated flint corn that makes excellent speckled grits and cornmeal. All the grain products are untreated. There are no preservatives added and the bran is not sifted away from the germ, giving a truly superior flavor. Barkers Creek Mill produces whole-wheat flour, buckwheat flour, corn meal and grits (both course and medium). Local farmers are encouraged to keep the heirloom varieties going. They also supply seed for a number of old Heritage varieties. The mill is working with the USDA maize genome project in Iowa to collect, catalogue and preserve historic, non-hybrid varieties of corn and to encourage their continued use by local farmers and gardeners.
The students at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School work at the mill on a regular basis learning about the process of milling, the history of the early Appalachian mountain settlers and the physics behind what makes the mill work.
NORTH CAROLINA Contest - 7/8/2017
Tied for THIRD PLACE
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Uploaded
August 31st, 2013
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Viewed 971 Times - Last Visitor from White Plains, NY on 03/28/2024 at 3:35 PM
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