Global Links Through Milling: ADM & Fulton's Windmill Cultural Center

            Products from ADM, both in Clinton and in its European operations, will be exhibited at Fulton's Windmill Cultural Center daily in September and October 2010. For this special exhibit, Clinton's plant manager, Jim Woll, linked Clinton's ADM products with products from ADM's operations in the Netherlands, England, Germany, and France.

            Fulton's de Immigrant Dutch windmill is operated by volunteers and several of its millers have been employees of the ADM plant in Clinton, Iowa.  Their experiences with ADM's wet milling operations have given them insights into dry milling as they promote tourism at the grist mill in Fulton, Illinois.

            In 2009, preparations were underway for the opening of Fulton's Windmill Cultural Center (WCC) which would house a gift of 21 model windmills from 10 European countries. Local retired volunteer educators sought the best ways to teach area schoolchildren about products from mills.  Three of the Fulton teachers spent a week in  Koog aan de Zaan, the Netherlands, where Pauline Gingnagel conducted a mill museum educational program.  A short distance from that museum stood an ADM chocolate plant. In Fulton, the teachers lived 3 miles from an ADM plant and while learning in the Netherlands, they lived and studied just blocks from an ADM plant.

            Two millers who manage Het Pink (The Yearling) in Koog aan de Zaan spent two weeks in Fulton in August 2010.  They worked at Fulton's mill, shared their successes with a junior miller program in the Netherlands, and experienced similarities and differences between their mill on the Zaan River and the Fulton mill on the Mississippi.

            The Windmill Cultural Center and de Immigrant windmill are open Monday through Friday 10-3, Saturday 10-5, and Sunday 1-5.  Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.