Places We Have Called Home In 2019
Home Is Where We Park It: Turkey Creek, Hollister, Missouri
August 16, 2019
Temperature 80
College of the Ozarks: Edwards Mill – Hoge Greenhouse
We’re going back – as promised – to The College of the Ozarks. Today we’ll cover two more places that we visited yesterday. Both places offer employment opportunities for the students on campus.
We’ll begin with Edwards Mill.
Grist mills were once plentiful in the Ozarks due to the abundance of water throughout the area.
Before the automobile the mills were the center of community life. Around the mill one would usually find a blacksmith shop, a general store with a post office, and often a sawmill and cotton gin run by power from the mill.
In 1971 ground breaking took place for the current Edwards Mill. How it works is really quite fascinating. The mill like so many in the past is powered by a huge water wheel.
The water for this wheel comes from Lake Honor which is across the street from the mill.
The water from the lake runs underground to the sluice that provides water for the wheel.
Now as we can see above the wheel is not turning and that is because when it is not in use the water is diverted at the head of the sluice to the small creek below.
When it comes time to put the wheel in motion so that grain can be ground, the gate at the head of the sluice is cranked up so that water can flow freely in the sluice to the wheel.
Moving inside we see the wheels and gears at the bottom of the mill that are powered by the water wheel. These wheels are connected by leather belts that required regular care and attention to preserve their life and keep them moving freely.
They in turn power the Gear Heads.
Moving back upstairs this is where the power from below goes to.
Which in turn powers the two grinding wheels.
We now have power to the grinding wheels, but how do we get from the raw grain to the finished product which could be corn meal or flour? It begins here, the grain is fed into the hopper
It then moves via this chute to the floor above
From the second floor it is fed down these two chutes to the grinding stones below
Then the grinding stones do their magic.
This top stone is mated to the bottom stone. The two stones are 15 inches thick and weight half a ton. The grinding surface of the runner or top stone is concave and carved in a spoke pattern. The runner sits atop a bedstone or bottom stone. Only the runner turns grinding the grain and as it becomes finer and finer it pushes it outward toward the perimeter of the bedstone where it is forced
down a chute to the floor below
from below it first comes here in bulk
and then moves here to be packaged for sale.
The finished product ready for sale.
That my friends is how it is done! I wish we could have witnessed it when it was actually in operation. Maybe we’ll come back another day and see if we have better luck.
Now to our next stop, Hoge Greenhouse. I confess I do not know my flowers and none were marked as to what was what. So let me just share with you some very beautiful and diverse flowers and plants.
We have a few more stops to share with you that we’ve made already but we’ll save that for tomorrow. We also have a few more stops to make at the college over the course of the next several days. Stay tuned we’ll bring all of it to you.
That was our day on The Road of Retirement. The day was a funny one in that every time I went outside to start a project it would start to rain. I’d packed everything up, come inside and in five minutes it would stop raining. After two or three cycles of this I threw in the towel and will try again tomorrow to get outside. I did get what I needed for an oil change for Graybeard and I’ll get to that Monday or Tuesday when I receive my special oil pan valve. So the day wasn’t a total wash out.
Thanks again for joining us today. We always appreciate your company and your comments. Catch you tomorrow.
These are the voyages of Graybeard and it’s two human soul mates. Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have not been before
See you on down the road!
"On The Road of Retirement" 
Interesting! Do they sell the finished product there? I guess you weren’t to work so the rain drove you inside.
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