♪Upbeat Music♪
I'm Barbara Smith, horticulturist
at the home and garden
information center at Clemson University. Today I have the
pleasure of being with Dr. David Wortham at Timms Mill,
which is located about twelve miles outside of Pendleton.
Dr. Wortham, is a physician in Anderson and how on earth did
you become interested in restoring an old mill like this.
Well Barbara it has to do with the land. And my wife and I were
introduced to this property in two thousand one and we just
fell in love with the property. It just happen to have an old
grist mill on it.And we did some research for
about a year and found out how rare it was to find a grist mill
still standing. And after that we felt the call to
restore it. It took about two years of restoration work, which
was done with mainly volunteer labor. Every time we ran into a
problem. A person would come in who had some expertise
or get us in touch with the person with expertise.
Everything that was done with it was done within a thirty
mile radius of us here. Which was a real blessing. Thank you
again for having us here today. I'm certainly glad you're part
of this community. Where I also live. I would love to see how
the mill operates but first I would like to hear some of the
history of the mill from your son the Andrew. Glad to have you
here. Andrew I understand that your graduating
from Clemson in may
congradulations. Well thank you. I love my major in biological
sciences. It's been a great journey. Good, your parents tell
me that you are quite the historian about the mill. Would
you please tell us some of the history. Absolutely!
Timms Mill was
established in seventeen eighty four by Mister Isaac Timms
about a mile up the creek. And it ran under water power and
was moved to this location until eighteen ninety eight. And
continued to operate until about nineteen sixty. When the
dam that they used to hold back water broke. And they had
operated it under electricity for a few years and then just
abandoned it. Until my parents bought the mill in two thousand
and one and began the restoration process until two
thousand four. Thank you so much for sharing the history with us.
Now I think it's time to go see how the mill actually operates.
Sounds great.
♪Upbeat Music♪
David I have certainly enjoyed learning about the history of
the mill but I'm very curious to know exactly how you make
the grits and the corn meal. So would you please explain the
process to me. Well Barbara we start with
a dent corn which is used for
grinding and it has a harder husk. And we take the corn and
put it into a grinding machine called a meters mill.
Which is stone ground and that process is powered by the water
wheel that you see behind us. This water wheels a fourteen
foot water wheel and we use about seven hundred gallons a
minute. To get about eleven horsepower. Now once the product
is ground you get both grits and corn meal when you grind.
And so, you have to use a separator to separate out the
grits from the corn meal from the chaff.
And then after that's done. Then we package it and then we
distribute it. When you're using the dent corn
I assume there is a white
variety of the dent corn and a yellow variety of the dent
corn to make both the white and yellow grits and cornmeal.
That's correct. We have white corn yellow corn. There we
have white grits and yellow grits as well.
Thank you so much for having us here today.
I've learned a lot about how the grits and the cornmeal are
processed and made. Would you please tell us how we can find
out more information about Timms mill.
well if you like us on Facebook. You keep up with our
events. We post our events there and we have a web page at
Timmsmill.com. Thank you for being here today Barbara and we
really enjoyed having you. It is an absolute joy. Thank you.