One of the most exciting phases of the craft spirits production process occurs at the beginning, when the farmers responsible for growing our New Scottish grain finally reap what they’ve sewn. Fall has finally arrived; it’s harvest time at Lime Kiln Farm!
Below, we’ve included a gallery of photos to give you a peak behind the curtain, so you can see how New Scotch Spirits sources the grain which gives our liquor that signature New Scotch taste!
View from combine window.
Combine seed bin.
Randy checks the flail.
First up: RYE! To harvest their rye, Randy and Rebecca Miller use a machine called a “combine”, which then deposits the grain in the combine seed bin. (For those of you striving for linguistic authenticity, in an agricultural context the word is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable.) Above, Randy checks the “flail” to make sure the combine isn’t leaving any rye behind; it’s a task he’s performed annually since he was a child on those very same fields, like his father and grandfather before him.
Row upon row of our bourbon’s ingredients…
Randy harvesting New Scottish corn.
Rebecca is proud of her family’s line of work, and of Lime Kiln Farm’s contributions to New Scotch Spirits. “As true ‘stewards of the land’, we utilize every part of the harvest,” she said in a recent email to me. “What we don’t give to you and Patrick ends up feeding our cattle. That’s why even the leaves of the corn are valuable to us.”
Corn from the wagon.
Cleaned and husked ears.
Shelled corn in grain auger.
Grain elevator takes the rye or corn from the wagon to the sheller.
It takes a LOT of blood, sweat, tears, and machinery to harvest our spirits’ ingredients.
Antique belt drive corn sheller
A 1953 Farmall H tractor… it’s the pride and joy of Lime Kiln Farm, and one of its hardest workers!
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s the mentality underpinning the Millers’ ongoing reliance on the same machinery they’ve used to harvest grain for generations. For example, they still utilize the pulley on their 1953 Farmall H tractor to power the belt on the antique belt drive corn sheller. “It’s the only tractor on the farm that we ever purchased new,” Rebecca says. “And that was back in 1953!”
Axel scale used to weigh corn.
Subtract weight of the tractor.
Then send to the distillery!
Finally, it’s time to weigh the grain—bagged rye is depicted in these photos—so that Patrick can arrange for shipment from Lime Kiln Farm and onto the distillery, where the next phase of production (distilling!) begins. In that process, the grain you see in these pictures will be mashed and distilled, bringing the Millers’ handiwork one step closer to the taste New Scots have come to know and love!
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HARD WORK, NEIGHBORS! When next you find yourself sipping a New Scotch bourbon, whiskey, vodka, gin, or rum, take a second to think of the Millers’ tireless labor… then toast to America’s family farmers.
How I miss old New Scotland this time of year….
—Jesse