(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Portrait of Chef John Drees, of Southern Lights Bistro in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Blog
Fire in Franklinville
I visited another mill yesterday in Randolph County, but this time the circumstances were more unfortunate than usual. The Franklinsville Manufacturing Company, also known as the Franklinville Mill built in 1838 and the oldest water powered cotton mill left in North Carolina was heavily damaged by a fire, probably caused by arson. I met Mac Whatley of the Randolph Heritage Conservancy who owns the mill and had hoped to preserve and restore the most historic parts into a museum. Mac showed me around and the damage was pretty extensive. A very old 3 story part of the structure was destroyed. Fortunately, a portion of the mill housing a large number of historic textile artifacts was saved and they are being moved to safer storage. Old buildings like this probably don’t seem important to most people, but the cotton textile industry was at one time the backbone of the local Randolph County economy and Deep River was lined with similar facilities. The most historic of those mills deserve to be preserved and the loss of this one in Franklinville is particularly painful. For more information on the history of the mill, go to http://www.cottonmillmuseum.org.
(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Mill Machinery
I made a trip out to the Old Mill of Guilford yesterday to pick up some stone ground grits for my son in New Hampshire. He’s in school at Dartmouth, and evidently grits are hard to come by in Hanover. I pick some up for him every couple of months. I enjoy going by the mill and looking at the old milling machinery. I come from a family that had about four generations of millers, so there must be some flour in my genes. And, you can fit 14 pounds of grits nicely in a USPS Flat Rate Box.
(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Mixing Feed
Saturday afternoon is no day off on a dairy farm. While son Michael was cutting silage this past weekend, brothers Rick and Greg Williams of Williams Dairy in Grays Chapel, North Carolina were busy packing down their large trench silo and mixing feed for their herd of Holstein cows. Rick mixes corn silage with alfalfa, cotton seed meal and minerals to produce a feed with the protein needed to produce milk.
(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Guinea Fowl
(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Pair of French Guinea Fowl, Grays Chapel, North Carolina.
Cutting Silage
The image above is rather poignant to me, which I guess seems rather odd, because its a shot of farm equipment in a field. The photo is of cutting silage corn, and I truly love to cut silage. I grew up on a dairy farm and every year in late August we cut silage. We did it with another dairy family, the Williams, with whom we shared a cutter and all the labor. Two families, fathers and grandfathers, sons and brothers would all get together and work together to harvest the corn on both of our farms. Things have changed a lot over the years. The Williams brothers (who still dairy farm) cut more silage in two hours on Saturday than we did in a week, but the feeling of that combined labor is still there. This year the brothers had a major breakdown on their equipment, so Frank White from Liberty brought his cutting equipment in to finish the harvest.
I talk about the image being poignant. The time I spent in the corn fields with my family and neighbors was probably some of the happiest moments in my life. It was very hard work, but something about being part of this community effort made it something special. Hard work doesn’t seem so hard when you have a close-knit group doing it together.
(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
1948 Willys Pickup
(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
A 1948 Willys 4wd pickup sits in Lineberry, North Carolina. Justin Latham and Odell Routh restored it and were cleaning it up for a car show.
Apples on the Table
(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Still-life photograph of heirloom apples.
Sunflower Blooms
(Photograph copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
Sunflower. Grays Chapel, North Carolina.
Sorghum Molasses
Saturday morning I went over to Gary McMasters’ farm in Grays Chapel, North Carolina to watch something my Dad used to talk about, but something I had never actually seen done. Along with neighbors Buddy McNeil, Adrian Staley, Brandon Bryson and Charlie Latham, Gary and his family were in the middle of making sorghum molasses. Gary grows the cane on his own land, then he, Buddy and Adrian cut it, strip it of its leaves, and then press the juice out of it with an antique mill powered by Gary’s mule Sam. Once the juice is collected, it’s cooked down into a syrup. On Saturday, the process started at 6 AM in the morning. Sam walked round and round till about nine and Gary collected one hundred or so gallons of juice. He then started a wood fire under a large stainless steel cooker and began to cook the liquid down. This cooking process is pretty much an all day job. Gary keeps everything at a steady boil and continuously stirs and skims pulp that floats to the surface. On Saturday it took until six in the afternoon to reduce the cane juice to a thick consistency where it could be strained and poured into jars. One hundred gallons of cane juice produced about ten gallons of finished molasses.
Gary sells the jars of molasses, but he doesn’t really do it for the money. It’s too hard a job and the returns are certainly not worth the amount of labor that goes into it. Rather, he does it because he enjoys doing things the old way. He can work his mule and get together with his family and neighbors and share and pass on skills that probably won’t survive many more years. Saturday I was a witness to a bygone era. Gary tells his daughter Elizabeth, “If you want to know how they used to do things, you better watch me now, cause when I’m gone you may not see it done again.” I feel fortunate to live nearby and to have the opportunity to see and record his labor.
(All photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)
