Grits served with a "slab" of country ham, sunny side up eggs aka over easy eggs depending on whether you turn them over or not, Mary B's Tea biscuits, orange juice and hot coffee on 12-30-08.  We dragged a couple of the biscuits through some home made apple butter also.  Beautimous simple eating!  You can add cheese to the grits if desired, but the water ground grist mill grits are delicious as a stand alone.

A few pixs along the way...preparing grits is as easy as it gets:  Click on thumbnails for a larger view.

Most people eating grits today are eating "store bought" grits.  Those grits are bulk processed by large manufacturing facilities from corn and bleached to make them snow white in color.  Of course the USDA and other agencies require them to have certain additives to make them safe and healthy; but who really knows what chemicals are used in the process.

Without a doubt, the best grits I have ever eaten was produced as follows: The white Haney open pollinated corn was grown by Mr. Blakney Steele (see pix below) of Casons Old Field, here in Anson County, North Carolina.  The white corn was allowed to dry and then "shucked", meaning the outer fibrous layers were removed, exposing the corn.  The kernels of corn were  then removed from the cob by placing the ears of corn into an old cast iron hand-crank powered corn "sheller"  that had a toothed rotating metal disc that pulled the individual kernels of corn from off the cob or core of the corn.  The shelled corn was then sacked up and we took the corn to Horton's grist mill near McBee, South Carolina.  This particular grist mill was powered by horizontal water wheels that were down in the flow of water in the stream.  Most of the ole grist mills depicted in photographs and paintings are of the vertical round water wheel construction, whereas this grist mill is just the opposite.  Attached to the water wheel was a large shaft that came up through the floor of the grist mill directly attached to the round stones that had a square hole cut through them that matched the shape of the end of the power shaft that supplied the power to turn the large natural granite stones used to grind the corn.  The shelled corn was placed into a hopper and the corn was gravity fed between the stone wheels, whereby grinding of the corn would take place.  Corn meal and grits were produced from the same corn that entered between the stones.  The outer part of the corn was ground into grits and the inner part of the corn was ground into fine corn meal.  A set of metal screens with different size openings separated the grits from the corn meal.  The advantage of grist mill produced meal and grits is the simple fact that the corn is ground very slow without a lot of heat being generated which alters the taste of the corn.  Also, there are no chemical additives to the process, again that would alter the true taste of the corn.

Above pix of Mr. Horton at the separator taken in 1971, courtesy of Duncan Heron.

Visit my short story Bonus Bobcat which has much more detail information concerning how the grist mill stones operate with pictures and an animation of the upper stone turning against the lower bed stone.

Below pix of an very old corn sheller made of cast iron and hand powered.  Mr. Steele's corn sheller was much smaller than this one but did exactly the same thing.

  

We purchased a large quantity of grits from Mr. Steele a few years back that was packaged into 5 pound sacks and sealed in plastic bags.  The grits were frozen except for a 5 pound bag that would be kept in the refrigerator to use whenever needed.  I could not detect any difference between the frozen grits versus the grits that are kept fresh in the refrigerator.  The grist mill water ground grits are far superior to any other type of grits made today.

At the turn of the century there was an operational grist mill located on Doctor Davis's farm below Savannah Creek that runs into the Pee Dee River here in Anson County.  A canal about 200 yards was used to channel water from the Pee Dee River to the water wheels.  The old grinding stones were still there until 1982 and were later removed by Francis Burr, dozer operator for the Catawba Timber Company  when the land was sold to the Catawba Timber Company.  Comments by Mickey Porter February 15, 1999.

Above topo map of the Savannah Creek area where the grist mill was located.  Also, check out the 5th paragraph of one of my hunting stories that elaborates a little more about the grist mill stones.

Additional comments from William Pence originally from North Carolina and now resides in PA.,  "A lot of people don’t know it but that part of the state, western Richmond and eastern Anson counties, where the coastal plain meets the piedmont was where most of the grist mills were in the old days.  The reason being was because of the “fall line” where the water usually was sped up before dropping off in elevation to the slower rivers of the coastal plain.  I still know back home several old places that we used to fish along creeks when I was younger that had the old remnants of earthen dams that were once “mill ponds”.  Several of these my grandparents could remember being active when they were children.  Your statement that “time waits for no one” certainly rings true in this case as many people today don’t know why or what a mill pond even was. Thanks for the article ole buddy. Take care." Updated 12-31-08.

See couscous recipe for additional information concerning grits.   

Stone water ground grits available from Old Mill of Guilford.

Pix of an empty grits sack......man, wonder where they went?

Pix of Blakney Steele (deceased) and his bride Melba (deceased) taken on 12-16-82.  Blakney was working with the NC Dept. of Correction when I went to work with them on Jan. 17, 1979.  He was a very tough but fair Correctional Officer and learned much about human behavior from him especially in a Correctional environment.  He was a very hard working man and "sharp as a tack" who farmed in his spare time.  Mrs. Steele made some "beautimous" homemade biscuits and served them with country ham and water wheel grist mill ground grits that Blakney grew the Haney corn himself. 

Web published by Bill aka Mickey Porter with update on 11-13-14.

LEAVING ON A SPIRITUAL NOTE