We are facing more weeks of winter but there is one sign of spring to give us hope: Wolf Pen Mill is running again after some months of quiescence. Due to the formidable efforts of Ben Hassett, mill renovator and farm manager, the mill has been put back in working order with all its original parts and has run many times in the past few years, but this is the first time in a while that the loud clanking of the ancient machinery has been heard in the valley as it must have been heard many years ago.
Resounding through the maple and sycamore forest, the clanking must have drawn farmers from miles around, loading their carts with corn and driving over the rough stone road to the mill. And then what a wonderful opportunity to sit outside the mill in the late winter sun, chat, smoke, sip a little whiskey and chat with neighbors isolated by winter storms. A few initials carved into the ancient stone walls speak of rare moments of leisure in those hard-working lives.
The mill and its water-driven wheel create a sense of rare continuity in our disrupted lives—not so much romance or nostalgia, for those were hard lives, especially for the women, but of a mysterious unrecognized link between the drivers hurtling by a few miles away on the throughway and those old farmers. There are still shreds of those old lives, especially in the folk songs some of us remember: “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,” “Chicken a-crowing on Sourdough Mountain,” “Oh the briary bush, the briary bush that pricks my heart so sore…”
I thank God for the mill and for all the children who have watched the big wheel turning, spellbound at this example of ancient ingenuity.
My brothers and I spent loads of time running around the forests of Wolf Pen. Also swam in the water at the base of the mill! Thank you for restoring the mill – I have beautiful memories of it.
Im your neighbor on Mint Spring Branch Road. I have heard great stories about the mill from people who have lived on Mint Spring Branch for generations. I look forward to one day seeing it for myself! Thank you for sweet reminder of simpler days… perhaps not easier, but for sure, simpler! The video is a treasure!