My dad always had a cane patch at the edge of the field. We had to help plant the cane, which was cut in short lengths, and then laid end to end in a trench and covered with soil. In the fall, several stalks of cane had been placed in a hole dug in the ground and covered with pine straw and sand to keep the cane from freezing in the winter. Little green shoots would come up and become cane stalks during the summer. I copied a photo from the internet to show a cane field.Around Thanksgiving time, and often on Thanksgiving day, we went to the cane field to "strip" the cane. I really dreaded this chore because I was short and the cane leaves had sharp edges and would always cut my arms and face as we walked thru the field, stripping the leaves off the stalks of cane with sharp knives. Daddy would come along and cut the stalks, then chopping off t
he top leaves and stack the cane in a big pile to be picked up later and taken to the cane mill near "the spring". That part I always enjoyed - picking up the cane stalks and feeding them through a machine to squeeze out the juice. We loved drinking the foamy cane juice, especially after it was chilled. Many people used mules to turn the cogs on the press to squeeze out the juice. Our dad was a good inventor and he rigged up a gasoline motor to turn the wheels on the press. In later years he hooked up his tractor with a belt to the cog machine.The juice followed a sluice from the machine to the vat where it was filtered through a piece of burlap before going into the syrup pan to be heated. The material c
ollected in the filter was dumped into a large wooden barrel called the "Pummings" barrel. This was collected for several days during syrup making (daddy make syrup for all the neighbors). After a couple of warm days, it started fermenting and was covered with honey bees. One day we went to the area where the cane mill was located to milk the cows nearby at the cowpen, and the hogs were rolling all over the place and squealing and acting funny. They were drunk!! They had gotten into the pummings barrel. They started chasing my granddaddy and one actually bit him and he had to go to the doctor.While the cane juice was cooking for 4 or 5 hours, a large dipper was used to skim the foam off the top. When it became dark syrup, daddy would remove the "stopper" at the end of the vat and fill tin buckets with the thick syrup. It was so
good on cold winter mornings, and we ate it with hot buttered biscuits, sausage, and I really like pouring it over salmon patties (which I still do today). We would put a hole in the side of a biscuit, add a little butter, and fill the hole with syrup and this was a delicious snack when we came home from school. I must show my granddaughters how to make "syrup and biscuits" when we get together again. It's difficult to find pure cane syrup anymore. And when you do, it's very expensive. The empty syrup buckets were put to good use. Many were used as lunch buckets for school. They came in handy for picking blackberries and huckleberries. After a few months they would start to rust and new ones would have to be bought for the next syrup making. When we retired and moved to the farm in 1996, the old syrup cooking vat was still there and we cleared away the vines, etc. to expose the brick fireplace where the vat sat on top. The old fire grates were still inside the brick structure, and the old metal chimney rusty so it was taken down. The metal pan had rusted and fallen apart so we removed the remnants and made a flower bed inside the structure. I'll post a photo when I can locate one in my collection.
The cane mill was sold to my Cousin Coleman Redmond when my father died. He set it up near his home and every fall would grind cane and make some cane juice. He gave us some and I liked it but Jim had a hard time trying to drink it. Maybe it's because he never had any as a child and it wasn't a special treat for him. I'll admit it didn't look very appetizing!
