More Interpretive Planning.
Any interpretive master plan that I have seen for old flour and grist mills mainly deal with the history of the mill, changes in ownership, technology, and the structure. They have a basic outline of how the mill operates and a basic interpretive program. It may never get into things like a mill tour, station interpretation or living history programs. This is something that is left up to the miller and the interpreters who would work at the site to develop.
I would trust that the mill already has a "Furnishing Plan." You really can't write the "Interpretive Master Plan" unless you have the "Furnishing Plan" already in hand. Then if the mill is going to operate you need an "Operation and Maintenance Manual." This will give you interpretive information on the operation of the roller milling system since no two were ever laid out the same. They were as different as fingerprints. This is why the mill could sell "patent flour" because it was produced from a "patented" process. Did the mill have a "long" or "short" roller milling system?
Then once the interpretive master plan is finished a volunteer handbook can be put together. There is no reason to farm out that project, a staff person can put that one together, and after the mill starts having volunteers.
You don't want to lock yourself into creating a three inch thick binder which you throw into the face of the new hires or seasonal interpreters, saying, "Read this! Know this! And you don't want to find out that you are not saying anything that is not written in the site's book!"
My experience working for the National Park Service is that when people come and go, people take their stuff with them. Stuff is boxed up and stored, and new people are allowed to develop their own programs. So anything that is the interpretive master plan is an outline, and no more than basically the folder or brochure for the site. If you end up creating a word by word narrative interpretive people will hate working there, you will kill creativity, you will end up with the same old thing year after year.
If you ever plan on ever doing any first-person interpretation the interpreters are usually left to develop their own characters. They do the historical research into the person, or creating a character, costume, language, mannerisms, etc.
I remember when teachers started calling up, and asking, "what hands-on stuff to you have?" If you said, "Well, we don't have any hands-on stuff." They would hang up and never call back.
A restored mill would do different types of programs depending upon which time of the year that it was. For example, I tended to to millstone dressing programs during the winter months when the water wheel was frozen, and millers did that sort of activity.
I hated listing any sort of related "house, garden, or walking tour" because you would end up with these senior citizens who could barely walk.
Who comes to a mill? School kids, you mainly get first grade, kindergarten, and pre-K. You tend to loose the older groups. The young school groups mainly come because of harvest or Thanksgiving. A few college classes but unrelated to your regular programs to the public. They will come because of rocks, or the action of the stream, etc. Family groups mainly on weekends and recreation people. School groups and summer camps during the week.
Depending upon the area, you may get more private schools than public ones. Do you charge per person or group to tour the mill or have a program. Not everyone can afford to pay. Is it free and open to all? Some schools like a German school would want to come and spend all day because back in Germany they still have the apprenticeship programs for everything. So one they would be spent the day with the miller, another day with a baker, etc.
Do you do tours of the mill all the time, and only let people go through the mill in tour groups only. This cuts out people hanging out, and becoming interested in perhaps volunteering. Do you do station interpretation or only when you have special programs.
A lot of time only person would be available to man the information desk, and may be the only person at the site. It makes it tough to man the phone, and conduct tours, pass out folders, etc. You should have at least two staff people to conduct demonstrations for safety reasons. If you sell the product you have to allow for clean-up, and set up time which would include maintenance and lubrication.
You don't want to lock yourself into an interpretation bible that says everyone has to know how to play a musical instrument. You don't want to have to tell people that you have to be able to pull out an musical instrument and sing a mill folk song as part of the program. You don't want to create lawsuits for yourself.
Historical buildings do not by law have to be made handicapped accessible. What special populations may visit the mill? Perhaps more deaf people than blind ones. Wheelchair may be first floor only. Special population groups may need to call in advance. You may not have a sign language interpreter on side all the time. Then if you have to hire one for a group it may cost 75 dollars an hour or more. There are people who make it their hobby to go around to historical site to see if their needs are meet. If not they quietly walk away and suddenly the site ends up with a lawsuit because their special needs were not met even if you were not informed about them at the time.
Not every student or senior can make it off of the bus into the site. So you need a photo album and hands-on items to take the mill to them on the bus. Blind students you need things that don't move that they can touch and experience the mill.
One of the greatest school groups that I had the pleasure of giving a tour to which had was one deaf student in the class. So all of the kids had learned sign language so any of the could interpret to the deaf child what was being said at any time, but this is the ideal world.
What will draw more kids to a program than any other is puppets. Find a local college that has a class in puppetry, and get them to make a series of puppets as a class project. You need a miller, perhaps a miller's helper, a mill cat, a farmer, and maybe one of the following: a talking bag of wheat, a talking stave of wheat, a talking bag of flour, and or a talking loaf of bread. If you have problems with people talking though the puppets mouth, then have the whole program on tape where they know when to move the puppet's mouth to the prerecorded words. The puppets could present the safety message, do a program on nutrition, or a folk story about mills, etc.
Speaking of safety message, you may consider having an age restriction on the visitor. We had one saying: anyone under the age of 14 had to be accompanied by an adult 18 years or older. School programs had to have one adult per every 10 kids.
When I worked for the National Park Service every park had their Director of Interpretation and Recreation. After a while they hired a 60 thousand dollar a year Educational Director who had to have a Ph.D in education. She wrote an "Interpretive Master Plan" for the mill, but I never saw it. The mill had a history of doing programs to the public, school and special interest groups for over 60 years. The "Interpretive Master Plan" was something that she carried around on her visits to schools.
I mentioned "Special Interest Groups" this could be any number of people who have an interest in mills, technology, history, folklore, or it could even be a group of teachers learning about the programs presented at the mill.
The school groups program was 45 minutes long, scheduled on the hour so you had times to change clothes, cleanup, take a breather, do a break for food or bathroom, etc. 15 minutes late and they lost their appointment. No larger than 25 kids, that meant two to three adults with the kids, this could include the bus driver. The program consisted of an introduction ("welcome to blank-blank"), safety message. Then we presented a brief history of the mill according to their age group. This was done outside of the water wheel so I could start and stop the water wheel for them to see. I talked about how the water wheel helped the environment by mixing oxygen into the water which helps aquatic life. Then I took them into the mill and ran the mill for a brief time for them to see. I might grab a kid to show and try to bag and or tie a sack of flour closed. Then I had one of a number of 15 to 20 minute films of mills.
A variation of this the program started out by the wood pile. I chopped some fire wood that was used in the mill. Then each student carried a piece of fire wood into the mill's firewood box. Around the pot belly stove in the Miller's Office, I would talk about the miller's clothing.
Then we would do hands on activities such as: Each student is given an ear of corn and has to shell it after it was demonstrated. We had two corn shellers, an older wooden one and a more modern metal one. The more modern one if I locked it to the floor, I could put a belt from the mill's power to operate it. The corn sheller spit the corn cob into a large basket, and the corn kernels fell down into a wooden box underneath the sheller. The eared corn was kept in trash cans because of the bugs and tossed out afterwards, never used to grind in the mill.
You could then talk about the uses of corn cobs. They make great file handles, corn cob pipes, pot scrubbers, fire starters. They smoke, but smell wonderful, and you don't need any kindling to start the fire. The most common use of corn cobs (even today) was as toilet paper, and that they were biodegradable..
Then we had a series of hand grinders attached to a table with metal pails where the kids ground corn came out after each one had turned the handles a few times. Then each student took their turn at hand sifting the ground corn. I had hand sifters which I made about 18 inches square with window screen in the bottom. The window screen would sift through the corn meal while leaving on the screen corn bran which was given to chickens.
In the warm weather I would start the program out by the water wheel, and in the cold months start it out by the wood pile to go inside around the pot bell stove. I did more hands on programs when the weather was bad.
When I could get wheat on the stalk, I did wheat flailing and winnowing programs. I made a number of wheat fails. Showed them that you hold the handle down and rotate the handle around in your had which brings the beater around to hit the wheat and break apart the heads. You never swing it over your head as seen in all of the old drawings. You would wear out you hands and arms in a short while, and crush the wheat. I had a basket maker make a winnowing basket with a canvas liner. I had also made a winnowing tray, a wooden light wood winnowing version of the basket. Then a sheet could also be used with a group of kids in a light breeze. You have to watch for stuff getting into the eyes.
I had also made a shaving horse with an apprentice seat so they could hand the master blanks of wood. I would make wedges for the mill, wood shingles, or rounds for chair legs, etc. I would make round handles to making tin blade flour scoops used in the mill. I could also use the shaving horse to make brooms, something that was important to keep the mill clean.
In the film area where we had a series of benches, I did programs on flour barrels. A flour barrel is a "dry cooper" with wooden split ash hoops, as oppose to a "wet cooper" with metal hoops to hold a liquid. I would talk about how by law 196 pounds of flour had to be found in each barrel. It was a shipping container that would last 30 years. A cooper could only make two per day. I would talk about barrel branding irons, and the later tin stencils, and still later round paper barrel head labels.
I made a rope making machine. It was a local industry. It consisted of a stand with three turning crank hooks. A movable stand with one crank hook. A series of different paddle. A basic three rope paddle and one for use with a center core rope. A stand with dowel rods on top like a electric pole to keep the strands from getting tangled. It did not cost me more than 250 to make it. Some hard wood, dowels, and some blacksmith work to make the hooks, a heart shaped plate, some washers, and brass sleeve handles. I could use it outside for lengths of 35 to 50 feet, or use it in side of the mill. Colonial rope walks average 150 feet long. The mill used rope in the sack hoist and cord to tie sacks of flour, meal, and mixes shut. I could send home each class with a nice jump rope make at the mill. And it was a hands on activity for the kids.
I would demonstrate tin smithing using the mills fire place that was used to heat the branding irons for the barrel heads. Tin smithing was important to make the metal elevator cups and to mend them when their tore them selves apart in normal everyday working the mill.
You mentioned your potential audiences, the independent and those on an organized tour. A percentage of the independent is the local people who live by the mill and would say that we have been to the mill a million times. This is one reason to keep coming up with new ideas, and this is where your volunteer base comes from. There there is a percentage of the independent who will never come back or may come back after a great number of years.
Not every visitor to the mill wants to be talked to or hear a presented program, these are the quit walk troughs. When video tape and cameras came out, there was a small group of people who walked though the mill and the park with a video camera attached to their eye. I guess they went home to view their life on a television. You could rarely get these people to stop and engage them in conversation.
The most important items for any "Interpretive Master Plan" is the Miller's Office. This is where a person or customer first looks for the miller, and where the main business of the mill is conducted from. You can do a whole program on the articles and tools found in the miller's office. Everything from mill books, trade catalogs, and trade magazines. The tools such as millstone dressing tools (even if it had been converted to rollers they would keep one or two around for old time sake), leather belt tightener, leather lacing and lacing tools, perhaps a lacing machine for using metal staples. An ax and hatchet, hammers, mallets, sack holders, bin and chute rappers, cobweb catchers. The miller would hang his hat, apron, and coat, and the miller's desk where he kept his records, a tally board, and other things used in the mill. The second most important thing found in any mill was the Miller's Cat for rodent control. You don't want a Tom cat who like Puss and Boots will put on his master's hat and go off to town to have fun. You want a female cat who will have kittens to have more incentive to cats mice. The miller keep his cats supplied with milk so they don't get sick from eating mice. The cats were a source to give extra ones to a farmer for a good Barn Cat, or sometimes a farmer would drop off an extra cat for the mill. The bottom outside corner of the Miller's Office and outside mill door were cut off to make a square opening to allow the miller's cat to come and go as she pleased. I would always ask the children, it they though someone cut away the corner of the door so the mice could go though?
What is your main theme for the site? It could be the "Mills of Rock Creek." Then secondary themes could be: "Mills of Washington, D.C.," "Oliver Evans' Mills," and "Mills of the Upper South." The secondary theme is where programs like "the Life of the Miller," fits into, and "Folklore of Old Mills." "Mills of Rock Creek" took in things like the merchant flour mills closet to Georgetown the seaport on the lower end, and the grist mills on the upper end of Rock Creek that served the local farmer. Most every mill along Rock Creek had two or three mill building on one dam, a flour or grist mill, and then either a saw mill, bone mill, paper mill, plaster mill, wool carding mill. Several were part of larger plantations with a whiskey distillery, cows and other farm activity with included slaves and indentured servants. The largest mill had two water wheels, and most mill sites had two or three mill buildings built to replace smaller earlier mill structures. There were several millwrights who built a number of mills along the creek or in the Washington, D.C., area. This is where my rope making machine came in. A man named Parrot who owned a mill on Lower Rock Creek also owned a Rope Walk in Georgetown. As to the "Life of the Miller," there seemed to be a handful of families who were the miller's of Rock Creek. They moved around, got mad at the mill owner walking out one day, only to come back begging for another chance. The White Brothers who last commercially operated Peirce Mill, their ancestor operated the first mill on Rock Creek. So the names repeat themselves. Shoemaker who was the miller for President Adam's Mill was prior to that the miller at Thomas Jefferson's Mill in Shadwell, Virginia. It was a Shoemaker who last own Peirce Mill before it became Rock Creek Park, and the Shoemakers were the family of flour inspectors who worked in the mills of Georgetown.
You only want to put down one program that fits into your main theme. This is your bread and butter program, the one that the local visitors will hear a million times. The secondary themes is ones that will be put together by the miller and the interpreters who work at the mill. It is the secondary themes and programs which will keep people coming back again and again. You don't want robot interpreters who must say the same words every time. If that is the case, then it maybe better to have a self-guided walk though with push buttons as various stations.
A Few Questions Based Upon My Experience.
1. What types of audiences are you attracting (in other words, is it just mill buffs, Agritourists etc. or are they getting general public, school groups, etc.).
Most audiences are attracted to the mill are as follows........Local visitors, they are the most often repeat visitor. They are the visitors that will purchase and use the mill's flour on a regular basis.
As for mill buffs, very few actually, perhaps one or two a month. They are not a big percentage of the visiting population. You might want to take special care in showing them around the mill. The problem is the there is a formula which the National Park Service uses given the annual visitation figures, they figured out that we can spend 15 minutes per visitor, family or small group of visitors. It may be one thing, if they come when there are no other visitors at the mill, but during the regular flow of visitors on an average day, you can spend no more than 10 to 15 minutes talking to anyone person. They are always welcome to come back later to talk when things slow down, or after the mill closes.
Besides the mill buff, there are also people we call techno-buffs. They only interested in technology, and care nothing about history. They are similar to industrial archaeologists, they measure the beginning of time from the invention of the steam engine. These folks prefer water turbines to water wheels, things that are hidden under water that they can visualize working in their brains rather then in front of their eyes. They people tend to ask the most annoying questions, and tend to challenge you with your statements to visitors.
School groups can be your largest percentage of visitors, or provide the greatest percentage of visitation numbers. If a mill has 30 to 35 thousand visitors a year, then the school visitation may be 24 thousand. The problem is that you have to go out and let them know you are there. You have open house workshops for school teachers which are scheduled like any other school groups. When you develop a school program, you give information about that program to the superintendent of the school system, and it is there job to distribute the information to the individual schools. The same is sort of true for private schools, you need to find the right person in charge of that sort of thing. You have to get on their approved list of okay field trips. When I was the miller at Peirce Mill in Washington, D.C., at the time the District Schools said that they have no money for field trips, and the kids live right there so they will visit things on their own time with their parents on the weekends. So most of our field trips were from Montgomery Schools in Maryland, and private schools in the district and Maryland.
Summer camps, for years we did not have summer camp groups until we let them know we were available for scheduled tours. Summer camps was the largest percentage of summer visitors.
Agritourists, when I worked in the National Park Service at various sites and other sites. We never considered any percentage of the visitors as being "agritourists." They tended to go to the steam and gas engine society shows. We would have a program when we could get wheat on the straw called, "From Field to Oven." This program involved threshing and winnowing wheat outside of the mill, milling it inside of the mill, and baking it into bread in a small cast iron cook stove outside of the miller's office. It was similar to a program called, "From Sheep to Shawl," where the sheep were sheared, the wool was combed, spun, and made into a shawl. Peirce Mill was built before there was any sort of farm machinery or equipment other than the fail and the winnowing basket.
Nearby in the Washington area were the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, the National Colonial Farm, and Oxen Hill Farm. I spent a lot of time at these places, and no one ever mention a class of visitor that is was called, "agritourists."
Being in Washington, D.C., I was across the road from the Hungarian Embassy, where the modern roller milling process was developed. I was just down the road from the Dutch Embassy, where we got a percentage of visitors who like the mill because it reminded them of the mills in Holland. We got people from all over the world, even South Africa, who the mill reminded them of mills there.
A small percentage of visitors would visit the mill after not being there for 30 or 40 years. Most of them walked away or got right back into their cars and left because they did not like changes that occurred in the passage of time. This being in the second restoration they abandoned operating the mill from Rock Creek and went to a system of city water and pumped water which was costing the taxpayer a huge amount of money each year.
A small percentage of visitors were because they were lost. A large percentage of visitors on the weekend were people out using the park for recreation, runners and bicyclists.
Another small percentage of visitors were scouting groups. They would come only on the weekends to tour the mill, mainly because it was there, and they were doing a cleanup program in the park. This is where I often used the rope making machine because it tied in with knot tying.
2. What experiences are appealing most to each one of those audiences?
I have to say, seeing the mill operate, and the old machinery (millstones and wooden gears) make flour. Seeing the water wheel, and wooden gears turn, the shafts, elevators, sifters, machinery turning. The mill was a water mill, so it was not like it was a windmill whose signal for action was having the sails turn. The clue with a water mill was seeing the water wheel outside turn, and wood smoke coming out of the chimney from the miller's office potbelly stove, or the basement fireplace.
3. What are the typical questions for each of those audiences?
Again, most of the questions and information that you are asked do not fall into the realm of the Interpretive Master Plan (IMP), but would be found in the Interpretive Handbook, Volunteer Handbook or Site Handbook.
Most often visitor questions were.........(1) Where is the restroom? (2) Is there food available? (3) Where is the drinking fountain or soda machine?
Once you got past those questions they would ask.........(1) Where is the switch or electric motor? The problem really was that we had a switch and electric motor. We could not even fool grandma, she knew the water to operate the mill did not come from Rock Creek. The fake sluice box was in direct line with the public restrooms that looked suspicious. (2) Do you sell the flour? Can you eat it? (3) How old is this place? Most visitors could care less about the history of the place. They wanted to see it operate. They were more interested in knowing (4) How does it work?
4. What exhibits, signs, and demonstrations have they attempted that have worked really well and why?
We had an old cast iron sign from the 1930's outside of the mill that everyone loved. People had their pictures taken with it, perhaps as much as the water wheel was used in the background.
Just inside of the mill we had a large 24 by 36 inch color cutaway watercolor of the mill. This is similar to my cut away drawing of the end view of Peirce Mill that is found in my web site ,and used in the site folders along with another view of the mill in cutaway from the side. People loved that and always asked if we sold it in poster form. I even tried to get it made into a large postcard.
We had a working model of the mill with moving parts that people loved that was made by Raymond Watt of the millers at the mill in the 1940's though the 1950's. People would take photos of that or even movies of it working.
I had a bulletin board in the audio visual area which I used to post information about mills. I had a series that I would post from American Miller called "Milling Highlights and Oddities." It was sort of like "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" One of the cartoon frames was about a man in 1910 who built a version of the diesel engine which was powered by flour dust.
People loved the fact that the mill was full of props. Real things used in operating the mill. Bundles of cord that was used to close the flour sacks. Bin paddles; sack holders; paint staff and a proof staff; sharpening (grindstone); and box of mill picks; trammel; cobweb catchers; bin rappers; tally board; scoops; grain shovels; brooms; ax for chopping wood; a wood box full of firewood; wooden flour barrels; cloth flour sacks, and scales, etc. People loved things around the mill that made it look more like a real mill, as oppose to other mills in the Washington area that were basically empty sterile environments without evidence of human work activities.
5. What have they attempted that hasn't worked well and why?
First person interpretation. The site had been open to the public for 50 years when I came to work there. They had never done first person living history, and the people did not understand it, or have a frame of reference for it there. They had no interest in seeing period soap operas, and it can be hard to pull off when may be the only person at the site. You really need someone outside to introduce the program to visitors.
6. What kind of problems and issues have they encountered in trying to offer a mill interpretive experience (such as safety issues, cleanliness, etc.) and how have they coped with them?
Safety was not a problem. We really never had to keep people from touching the moving machinery. Once and a while people would toss coins into the machinery which could make the top millstone jump its spindle, and kill everything around it.
Housekeeping, if you read my health guidelines, there should be no problem. People like to see the mess of the grain, and flour dust. They really loved it when the flour dust covered my clothing, hair and beard. I kept less grain around during the summer months, and ground less because of less visitation and sales, and because of the heat and bug problem. Most of the grinding was done during the fall or at harvest time when people would think about going to see a mill, and though the winter months to spring. Cleanup was always a big question. I wanted to close the doors and clean up, but once we locked the front door we went home. They did not want us being there if we were not entertaining the public. So cleanup time was always a problem. The ideal thing is if the park has a cleanup crew who would cleanup the mill once you went home.
For the most part people did not steal anything like my tools laying around. We lost a cookbook to a grandmother once and a while, but that was about it. The mill did get broken into once, but that was on the last night the road was opened after the bridge next to the mill was being rebuilt. I always thought that it was one of the bridge workers who had a year to check out things in the mill while the bridge was being rebuilt. They broke into the safe, and stole the cash box of 35 dollars, stole a television which was also a video tape player, and took an outdated computer. Again they left the tools and audio visual equipment alone.
7. In addition, we need some more definitive information on Agritourists. What depth do they want? What kind of questions do they ask? How far do they travel for an experience?
Again, we did not have "agritourists" visitors, even at Peirce Mill where once all of Northwest Washington was farm land. When I worked at the Cable Mill in Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains (and in other parks), we again did not have "agritourists." It was the time period of the horse or mule and a plow, the cradle, fail and winnowing basket. No mechanical harvest machinery or steam or gas engine tractors to attract that sort of visitor population. Are there "agritourists" in the East which is the land of soft or English wheat? I am not a "Agrihobbyist," a person who collects and restores old agricultural equipment.
Number 509, American School, Early 20th Century. "Pierce Mill at Rock Creek Park, Washington, D.C.," Oil on Artist Board, initialed A.M.T. LR, identified and Dated 1937 on Verso, 18 X 12 inches. 70/125. Yet to come on one of the web pages is an "Circa 1830 Anonymous Painting of Pearce's Mill on Rock Creek."
Return to Home Page mailto:trhazen@hotmail.com
