During the month of May the Friends of Pine Creek Grist Mill hosted over 900 elementary school students at the Pine Creek Mill. We had days with only 40 people and one day with almost 200 people.

All tours were free. We took in a few dollars in donations and made a few dollars from sales, but the tours do not pay for themselves. However, the Friends of the Mill host the school tours as a service to the community and as a commitment to the education of the next generation. Any donations we receive to support the interpretive program are greatly appreciated.

To describe an average tour is difficult but would be a group of 75 or so fourth graders with 15 teachers, parents and other adults along. The school buses pull into the parking lot shortly after 9 AM and the peace and quiet of the mill area is gone for the next 5 hours. To keep control of a herd of rambunctious kids requires everything to be organized and ready. For a group this size the kids are divided into seven groups before they leave school. As they jump off the bus the seven groups are quickly formed and off they go to seven educational sites for a fun day but with lots of learning going on. Through the day the groups rotate between sites. Each group would be about 12 kids and adults. If more kids are coming then we have more groups and more sites to visit, keeping each group small.

We try to have a lot of hands on activities so the students learn about pioneer life but also learn how hard of a life it was.

• Pine Creek Mill Tour. The kids are enthralled with the mill as the equipment starts to turn and rumble to life. They drop corn and buckwheat into the mill stones and watch flour come out.

• History of Grinding Grain. This is very hands on as the kids grind corn into flour with a replica mini-mill, antique burr mills, and stone metates. Then they use the flour to make pancakes – corn kernels to pancakes by kidpower.

• Butter Making. Butter churns are demonstrated but the kids actually make butter in small plastic vials: shake, shake, shake – butter. What a revelation to some kids and then they eat their butter.

• Old Time Tools. This sites takes some real muscle to use crosscut saws, pound square nails, make wooden shingles with a froe, bore holes in a beam with an auger and use other old tools. The kids cut up over 25 feet of log into one inch slices.

• Melpine Country School. School as it was 100 years ago with lard sandwiches, spelling bees and no computers. Lard sandwiches were “gross,” and the words the kids were able to spell were surprisingly tough.

• Nye Cemetery. The builder of the mill was buried here in 1852. A history lesson is followed by “grave witching” with witching sticks. Now that is a different activity.

• Nature Hike. The students head into the woods to learn about poison ivy, bedstraw, sweet cicely, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild ginger and other plants that were known and used by the Native Americans and pioneers.

As you can tell, most of our programs have a hands-on approach. The kids love it and we also received many compliments from the teachers. All of our sites emphasize history and the kids go away with a much greater understanding of the history of our area. Some of the kids think that pioneer life was “cool,” and some think it was a tough life.

Last May was a big month for the mill and it took a lot of volunteer hours to pull it off. We had about 15 different presenters over the course of the month. Most of the presenters were volunteers, one worked for the Senior Internship Program and three were paid staff, who actually put in more volunteer hours to prepare for the tours than they were paid. We were all glad when the school tours ended knowing we each had contributed to the education of 900 students. We all look forward to working together again next year as we teach the history of our community in an informal hands-on approach.

Spring 2007 is almost here and there are already many days scheduled for school tours in May. If you are interested in helping with school groups, please call Julie Whitehall at 563-263-2153. She did an excellent job of finding volunteers and organizing the school groups but sometimes it was touch and go whether or not we were going to have enough people. We need more volunteers next year. Talking to kids is fun, frustrating, challenging and satisfying all at the same time, but I’m sure we made a difference in the education of 900 kids.

The presenters received many thank you letters from the kids with comments:
• “Thank you so much for the tour of the pine mill.”
• “I had no idea the guy who built the mill tied himself to the third floor.”
• “Thanks for showing us the snakes. They were awesome!” Sometimes there are snakes in the mill.
• “I really liked the cross cut saws and the wood splitter, those were awesome!!!!”
• “I liked the old tools and hammering the square nails in the pine tree. It was fun. My mom liked the square nails too. She also hammered a nail in the pine tree....I am going to ask my grandpa if the used any of the stuff you showed us.”