Eating authentic food is the latest fetish for foodies and even for us more casual consumers. We are urged to get closer to the source of what we eat. So we want our vegetables and fruits to come from a local farm. Organic beef is better, some say. I hear the latest Manhattan fad is eating venison — after you have bagged the deer in Connecticut, of course.
But if you want a truly authentic eating experience this weekend that not only brings you closer to your source of food but takes you back in time head over to Peirce Mill by Tilden Street in Rock Creek Park for the mill’s grand reopening on Saturday.
You can see millers dumping kernels of dried corn or wheat berries down a chute that runs them between enormous French millstones and grinds them into flour. Yes, you can buy the freshly ground corn meal or flour. Yes, you can go home and make corn bread.
“Delicious,” says Steve Dryden, who wrote a history of Peirce Mill and now serves as executive director for Friends of Peirce Mill. “I added jalapeno, too.”
Rock Creek once powered eight mills from the D.C. line south to where it empties into the Potomac River. Peirce Mill, which started producing flour before the American Revolution, is the only remaining mill. It was restored in the 1930s and its water-powered wheel turned stones that ground flour until 1993, when the National Park Service put it out of service.
About a decade ago, a group of local preservationists formed Friends of Peirce Mill, started to raise funds, and coaxed the project to completion. Work went slowly until last year. The group raised $1 million from private sources, landed a $2 million grant from the Obama stimulus package, and the renovation became a reality.
I stopped by the mill in August to check out the renovation. Gus Kiorpes and John O’Rourke were hard at work recreating the elaborate wood and metal contraption that translates the power from the water wheel through gears that turn the stones and mill the grain — as it was done 200 years ago. Their work is a testament to patience and precision. It’s worth a visit to the mill just to see the fruits of their labor.
Students from nearby schools used to visit Peirce Mill before it shut down in 1993; now they can return and learn the history and the process right before their eyes.
The renovation of Peirce Mill is a watershed in the push to restore Rock Creek and the national park that covers 80 acres, in the District and Maryland. Fish ladders now allow alewives and herring to swim upstream and spawn. The Rock Creek Conservancy, a new organization focused on caring for the park, recently came into being.
The Peirce Mill festivities are scheduled all day Saturday, from science demonstrations at 10 a.m. to 18th and 19th century American music all day, to candlelight tours in the evening.
The park service doesn’t advertise the flour for baking, but it works, authentically.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
