Balmoral Grist Mill

Visited North America's oldest continually running grain mill, tucked into rolling farmland in rural Nova Scotia. A branch of the NS museum, they've hired a keen, hardworking miller. His affable humility, commitment to pure original methods, self-sufficiency and the reward of loving cantankerous machinery intimately were spellbinding. The story has just peaked as yesterday he milled the first batch of whole wheat flour, rather than oatmeal, in five years - thanks to persistent painstaking repair of a mill abused by an uninformed predecessor. To hear him describe walking the mill, feeling the product carefully in hand to gauge the state of his beef-tallow-lubricated wooden (yes, wooden, made by himself) bearings, adjusting the 2400 pound millstone a few millimeters while spinning at 120 rpm, all the while listening to every creak, grumble, and and clunk in the machinery for subtle signs of misalignment like a tenderhearted physician is spellbinding reminder of the lost skills of yesteryear.

Here's an article about this dedicated miller. Note that the land was bought for $12, and that there has been an unbroken succession of millers working this venerable old mill.