Ron West is a retired engineer from Consolidated Diesel Company with an interest in old engines. Ron's wife was raised in South Carolina, and grew up cooking and eating grits. This got Ron to thinking about what it would take to merge the two interests, and restore an old mill and grind his own country style grits. He located a couple of grist mills in western North Carolina with serial numbers dating back to 1926, and got to work on a complete restoration of one of the mills. It took him about a year to fully restore the mill, and even then he didn't know what kind of product they would actually create. With only one way to find out, he bought some corn, started up the mill, and to his delight started making grits! The mill is based on old stone grinding technology, which Ron says creates a far superior product to the hammer milling that is used for mass grit production. Stone grinding is something of a lost art, but Ron quickly found a local market for his grits, and has been selling them throughout the state ever since. He offers both white and yellow country grits. He also mills a larger type of grit that originated in the South Carolina and Georgia coastal Gullah region, called Geechee Grits. In just the past year, Geechee grits have risen in popularity as many chefs around the East coast have picked them up and started experimenting with them.

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