Edge Mill and Oil Press @museum.de

M: It is never quiet in a mill. There's rumbling, squeaking and clattering from every nook and cranny. The German term for edge mill, Kollergang, even echoes the rumbling of the large stone wheels as they rotate on the great stone slab, the bed.

F: This mill doesn't produce flour or meal, but oil: from linseed, sunflower seeds, beechnuts or rapeseed. How does it work? Quite simply: first, the seed is decanted on to the bed. Now take a few steps back and look up: you'll see a large wheel with paler cogs that have recently been replaced. This cogwheel is connected via a shaft to a bevel gear and to the upright shaft on the floor above. It supplies the edge mill with energy from wind power. When the cogwheel starts to turn, the vertical millstones – the runners – gradually begin to rotate, and with a great rumbling, they crush the oil seeds on the bed.

The centrifugal force gradually pushes the crushed seeds on to the round boards along the edge, where they're collected in a wooden box or copper pan beneath the opening.

M: Next, the oil press comes into play, which is just behind the edge mill. The crushed seeds are exposed to heat and loaded into the rust-coloured cylinder. As the press descends, the oil runs through the many openings and into the channel, from where it's filled into bottles or barrels. The farmer can expect between 12 and 14 litres of oil per hundredweight of seed – equivalent to between 21 and 24 pints.

F: All that's left is the crushed husks and cell walls of the seeds, which are compressed into a dense lump known as press cake or oil cake. But this waste product isn't discarded! It provides excellent animal feed, since it's not only tasty; it also gives cows, sheep and horses a nice, shiny coat.

M: The press cake often represented the miller's payment, passed on to him by the farmer after pressing was completed.