Kinda tired this morning, which I guess isn't all that surprising considering I put in a few hours of work yesterday afternoon. Finished cleaning out the wood shed, except for two full sheets of OSB, which were just to heavy to cart up the hill to the barn by hand. But the shed is now ready to be stocked with new fire wood for next winter. Just need to find some time to start cutting it all up and stacking it in.
   Also spent several hours continuing work on the new fence along the entrance road. Have been working on the section that actually crosses the driveway and yesterday I got one of the gate posts set. It took about an hour longer to dig the hole for the post just because there was nearly a foot of mixed gravel and dirt to get through before I could get down into just plain dirt. Ended up having to take it out by hand, one scoop at a time. Finally got the post in though and it is now braced and ready to have some fencing hung on it. Hope to get that done later on today.
    Also trimmed up a couple more trees around the house here. Really needed to wait until the leaves came out so I could see how high up the limbs needed to be lopped off. It's starting to look pretty nice looking out over the forest now. Right now the orange colored 'Flaming Azaleas' are blooming just down the hill with the white Dogwoods along side. It looks like the Rhododendrons will start blooming any time soon, but so far nothing is happening with them.
   Hope to get a couple more fence posts put in today, but need to go out and spot spray a couple more acres of weeds while the wind isn't blowing first. It appears that the stuff actually works so it's time to go get some more of it done.
   Right now though it's time for a few more photo's from our trip a couple of weeks ago. This is from our side trip to see the grist mill at Babcock State Park in West Virginia while we were over there for the 'White Water Whirl' contra dance.

The Grist Mill at Babcock State Park, W. Virginia 

May 3, 2014

On the inside of the mill you see the working part of the operation. On the right side, inside the round apparatus is the set of grinding stones used for grinding the coarser corn meal and flour. The corn kernels, after being removed from the cob, are dropped into the square hopper on top and are fed down into the center of of the two stones. The bottom stone is stationary where as the top one is turned by a system of gears and belts that are powered by the water wheel outside. The corn is pressed between the stones and the resulting meal filters down the grooves in the stones until they reach the outside edge where they are collected in the surrounding wooden structure and then on to either a storage bin or right into a bag to be sold. On the left side are the two stones used to grind the harder wheat into flour. The top stone is hooked up to a wooden crane that is used to remove the stones in order to flatten and re-groove them.

As the stones were turning there was a little wooden 'tickler' positioned under the hopper where it would shake the hopper enough to keep the grain flowing without having to be tended to by the miller.

This set of wooden gears powered a vacuum system that in the past would of sucked the ground meal up a chute and then into a series of bins that would sort it according to the size of the grind. They don't actually use that system any more as they really don't grind all that much corn. But the gears still turn, and that's kind of neat to watch.

Looking out a side door at the top of the water wheel and the control gate on the flume.

Found a new location from which to take pictures from this time, so most of the rest of these are just various photo's from that area.

 

 

 

 

 

One last photo of the mill.

And one last photo of Rima.

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