Only grist grinder builds own mill

By John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

David Lee Rohde Sr. shows off his grist mill grinder he set up and operates at his home outside Hamlet on Blacksmoke Drive.

David Lee Rohde Sr. didn't plan to become Richmond County's only operator of a grist mill. But he started out one day with some rye grain he raised and ended up with a mill.
"Why I started, I don't know. But if you set in that chair, you'll mortify," said Rohde, 65, a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer who moved to the Hamlet area in 1993.
Rohde is a native of Kansas who served in the Navy from 1955-75 as a quartermaster, including a tour in Vietnam in 1968-69 in the Coastal Squadron during the Tet Offensive.
He lived in Pennsylvania in retirement until his son, David Lee Rohde Jr., moved to Hamlet for a job and sent for his father to come and join him.
"He said, 'Dad, come on down.' I said I might as well. I'm country anyway," Rohde said.
And he found a "country" spot indeed, five miles out of Hamlet off Boyd Lake Road, not far from the Scotland County line, where he and his son bought property in 1998.
David Jr. now lives and works in Cheraw, S.C. and Rohde lives on 2.9 acres on unpaved Blacksmoke Drive with his other two sons, John and Dennis, and his wife Wilma.
Blacksmoke Drive has a story of its own. Rohde said it is named for the former owner of much of the land in the area, an engineer for Seaboard Coastline Railroad back in the days of steam locomotives. He was known as "Blacksmoke" McDuffie "because when he was on the throttle, the black smoke rolled," Rohde said.

It started with rye

Rohde owns 2.9 acres on Piper Glenn Drive near his home where he has a vineyard in its second year of growth. Within three more years, he hopes to be able to produce grapes.
But before the grapes, he raised a crop of rye grain there. And when he began looking around for a grist mill in the Richmond County area to grind his grain, he couldn't find one.
"All the grist mills were busted up in the '70s because of the moonshining," he said.
Instead of grinding grits and cornmeal, apparently all the local grist mills had fallen into illegal use to grind mash for the production of "moonshine" or illegal homemade whiskey.
But Rohde keep looking and eventually found a disassembled grist mill in a junk pile in Pinebluff. He bought it from the owner, but found the 1947 mill was missing key parts.
He traveled to North Wilkesboro to the manufacturer, Meadows Mills Inc., and got the parts he needed, but the replacement drive wheel needed some custom modifications.
Wayne Yates of Yatco Machine Co. in Hamlet helped customize the drive wheel.
Then Rohde needed something to power the drive wheel and run the grist mill.
He located a World War II vintage Universal power plant out on Airport Road. But this, too, was "all in pieces and missing parts" for the 18-horsepower Fairbanks-Morse engine.
With more help from Yates and Hamlet mechanic Daniel Morse, the powerplant was soon running and Rohde had ground his first run of grain, the rye crop he raised.

Corn and wheat, too

But with a grist mill, Rohde couldn't rest on his laurels. He got corn and wheat through Hamlet Ace Hardware from Mocksville Mill Co. in Mocksville and expanded his grinding.
He began producing grits and cornmeal from the corn and cracked wheat and farina hot breakfast cereals from the wheat. Now what to do with all the products of his labors?
Rohde found the answer for that through his church, All Saints Episcopal in Hamlet, which provides food for soup kitchens in Richmond, Scotland and Moore counties.
Over the past two years of grinding, he has produced 3,535 pounds of corn and wheat products from his mill, all of which he hand-sifts at home and packs in Zip Lock bags.
And the leftovers from his grinding and sifting is a mixture of corn and wheat that serves well as "chicken scratch" which Rohde trades to his neighbors with chickens for their eggs.
Rohde doesn't sell any of his products. What he and his family doesn't eat, he gives away through the All Saints Episcopal soup kitchen program.
"This is country out here," he said of his Blacksmoke Drive neighborhood, "where folks look out for each other, take care of their own and mind their own business."