I just got back from my dads and had a chance to make some cornmeal. Many probably have never seen an old gristmill in action so I figured I’d post up some video of it.
Dad and I used to grind cattle feed with a super M and an old feed mill. Those flat belts are something else!
Now I’m thinking about catfish and hushpuppies.
…and an ice cold beverage.
The M we have is used primarily for the gristmill. It was converted to propane 30 or so years ago. It never lets us down. Hasn’t been cranked in 6 months. Today, we turned the propane on, hooked up the battery jump started, choked it, and it fired right up. We used to have a bigger gristmill. That one in the videos weighs around 1500 or so pounds. Granite grinding stones. We also make old fashion grits. Good stuff
Reminds me of growing up on the farm with no electricty. Our tractor was an old JD 2 cyl. Flat belt was to run the combine and other things.
A hard life, but it teaches you many lessons……
The JD was not easy to start by throwing the flywheel. Use Ether when cold.
I still have an IH 504 with belt drive! But, no belt driven tools at the moment.
Thanks for showing us. That is some vintage machinery there. My old neighbor collected tractors and he had a Farmall similar if not the same as yours. I hated the hammermill we used for the dairy for awhile for the reasons you can see in your video. The dust. It made my skin feel like someone had poured acid on it.
I can’t count how many times I’ve started a piece of equipment with ether. That or like you said, pulling it down the road and throwing it in gear. Both ways worked on trucks, tractors, lawn mowers, 3 wheelers, and just about anything else.
I don’t know why I just thought to post this. I’ve helped make grits/cornmeal so many times, but yesterday it hit me to take pictures and video it so that I could show others. I know there are gristmills out there, I just don’t know anybody else with one.
How were the corns removed from the cobs?
That, isn’t so old fashion. They have old corn pickers that pull the ear off whole then shellers that remove the kernel from the cob. We use something like the following video. It pulls the ears and shells them all at the same time. Stalks go in, kernels come out.
Corn harvest is not so common here.
We only have energycorn(for biogas production) which gets choped with everything because the whole biomass counts.
I have 4 plants(yes four) sugarcorn which is super sweet and very tasty for barbecue.