ADRIAN — For more than 100 years, the Cutler Dickerson Co. was a mainstay of Lenawee County’s agricultural community. From their location at 507 College Ave., along the banks of the River Raisin, the company provided area farmers with livestock feed, fertilizer and more, and over the course of a century it became a beloved community institution.
Cutler Dickerson closed in 2016, just a few years after its sale to an out-of-town company. But David and Michelle Van Brunt, who purchased the building at auction and reopened it in 2017 as Thee Old Mill, say their goal is to provide the same friendly, personal service that customers of the old Cutler Dickerson came to expect.
In addition to feed — which is made in-house under the True Blue label that Cutler Dickerson originated and the Van Brunts secured the rights to use — Thee Old Mill sells pet foods, landscaping supplies, farm and garden tools, and work boots from brands like Red Wing, Irish Setter, and Muck. Their customers are diverse, ranging from farms of all sizes to people in the city who need gardening supplies or seed for their backyard bird feeders.
Much of their product line is home grown — literally. The Van Brunts farm near Onsted and use their own crops in the feed they manufacture. All of the corn comes from their farm, and they get wheat locally as well, trying to buy as little as possible from outside the area.
“All of our feed has our crops in it,” David Van Brunt said. “The majority of our feed we try to locally source, and it’s made fresh, it’s made daily.”
Because the feed isn’t trucked in or sitting on a shelf for weeks, he said, the nutrients don’t have time to break down before it gets to the animals. And because they manufacture the feed on-site, they’re able to make custom blends for their customers, regulating the quantity of each ingredient using a large console filled with levers that the staff refers to as “the organ.”
The Van Brunts have four adult children, all of whom have been involved with the business in some way, though only one works there full time. Their oldest daughter, Kylee, runs the store, working alongside general manager Kevin Van Heusen. Daughter Baylee teaches eighth grade at Blissfield Middle School, Karly is a registered nurse at ProMedica Hickman Hospital, and son Bradlee is in college at Madonna University.
They were also able to hire a few of Cutler Dickerson’s longtime employees. Carl Jacobs helped get the feed side up and running. And Ric Patterson, whose father was a partner in the business before it was sold, has now been working at the location in one capacity or another for about 60 years. Patterson’s official hire date was in May 1975, at the age of 20. But he’s been around much longer than that, having started off coming in to sweep and dust when he was a child. He’s been with the business for so long that he has customers whose grandfathers he can remember waiting on at the store.
Patterson has seen a lot of changes over the years. One of those changes goes hand-in-hand with the way farming has changed over the years.
“Initially the bread and butter for what was then the Cutler Dickerson Co. was the small dairy farms, which hardly exist anymore,” Patterson said.
But in some ways, the return of local ownership to 507 College Ave. represents a revival of the way things used to be — getting back to family-oriented, one-on-one service in a setting where “your accounts become your friends.”
That legacy is important to the Van Brunts, both Lenawee County natives who currently live in the house where David grew up. And the next generation takes it seriously too. “We’re trying to continue the example they set way back when,” Kylee Van Brunt said. “The standards, the service that should be provided.”
It hasn’t always been easy. In particular, Cutler Dickerson’s deterioration under out-of-town ownership — which was so rapid that the business shut down less than three years after being sold — means they’ve had to work hard to gain trust. Just the store’s address was enough to raise red flags for some vendors.
And although they’re practically in downtown Adrian, their location — stretching the entire one-block length of Water Street, parallel to the South Branch of the River Raisin — isn’t all that visible.
“As long as we’ve been here, people still do not know that we’re here,” Michelle Van Brunt said.
Nonetheless, they’ve been able to keep growing, and even opened a second location in Hudson about five years ago. The growth has been steady rather than rapid, and the Van Brunts say that’s how they like it.
“Our goal is to continue to grow and get more efficient,” David Van Brunt said, “and do a better job at what we can do and offer more to the community.”
For more information, go to theeoldmillstores.com or call 517-759-3170 (Adrian) or 517-448-2101 (Hudson).
