Ressurecting an old thread again,so I apologize up front.I was raised on a farm,not a farm designed to make a profitable living,a farm as a way of sustaining life.What we did everyday,had a purpose,and not much if any was wasted.Our farm fed us well with leftovers for others.My grandfather was the patriarch of the farm,I never knew him to make a bad decision,they would be to costly.
We raised cattle for eating,only selling to replace for breeding.We raised hogs for butchering,and rendering the fat for lard,using the lard for cooking and salves.Chicken were free range numbering well over 100,along with several ducks.Weekly we would butcher a few chickens and a duck for meals all week.We raised several acres of corn,early corn would be eaten and canned,late corn,dried,hand picked ,some hand shelled for seed,hog and chicken feed,and the rest put away on the cob in outside corn cribs.
Several varieties of apple trees surrounded the back yard.These were canned,dried,and bartered for farm supplies to neighbors,town folk,and stores.We planted 40 acres of sugar cane each year.At harvest time,all the family came to help,us kids would line up side by side,each taking a row of cane on the right and left.Our duty was to strip all the leaves from the 12-14' high cane stalks.Once we all completed a pass through the cane,we would move down and take two more rows each,and stip leaves back to the other end,repeating this process untill all the leaves were stripped,leaving a 40 acre field of bare standing cane stalks.
The men of the family would follow through the can with tractor and wagon,cutting the canes off at the base,then cutting the seed heads on top the cane,letting them fall onto the freshly pulled leaves us kids just stripped.The men then stacked the cane stalks unto the wagon,while us kids gathered all the seed heads into feed sacks to be dried for future seed and chicken feed.the stalks were taken to a set of rollers on a hill above the heating vats.Once again us kids would help the men toss the cane stakes into the rollers,powered by an old engine .The cane juice that was squeezed out through the rollers,would drain down a flume designed with whatever we could make on the farm.The cane juice would drain into a set of boiling pans ( also homemade on the farm out of halved steel drums and connected with metal piping.)these pans were heated to boil the juice.As the juice heated the women in the family would use skimmers made out of scrap wood to skim the foam that accumulated of the boiling cane juice.The heating and skimming process lasted several hours,often well into the early morning.
Once the boiling was complete and all the foaming ceased,the final product (Molasses ) was tasted,approved,and bottled in 5 gallon jars and sealed.Many ,many 5 gallon jars were cooled and placed in a caller for bartering and use.each family was awarded one 5 gallon jar of molasses as payment for helping.I know this was lengthy,but everything done on the old farms, we're just to get through the next day.I miss the hard labor involed ,and miss the reward of the farm.I am 52 years old,but I can still smell the fresh molasses as it filled the shed between two corn cribs.I still smell the morning air just at daybreak as I sat on my grandpas lap,watching the sun rise above the pine trees on the ridge above the old farm house.I can still taste the fresh eggs and fresh bacon,cooked in old iron skillets,I still see the smile on everyone's faces at the end of the day,smiles unaffected by city life and city noise............Those memories are why I still do all I can now,to live as we did then,peaceful and satisfied.
