MOLASSES COOKIN'

Farm community events have been held for many years. It was common for the community to gather to help each other. Some of these events include corn shucking, barn raising, wheat thrashing and molasses cooking. Molasses was used for cooking and sweetener and was mixed in livestock feed as a source of protein, and it’s still used for that today. On Harvest Festival Day we invite the community to come help with the molasses making. We often have volunteers show up well before 6AM to help get the vat heated up. There is a long history in the South of making molasses in the late Fall. Farmers would grow and cut three wagon loads full of cane. Each stalk of cane is then fed, one stalk at a time, into the cane mill to crush the juice from the cane. The mill is turned by mules or horses walking in a circle. The juice from the crushed cane flows into a pipe running downhill into the molasses vat. The vat is a steel cooking pan protected from the weather under the molasses cooking shed. The pan has a wood fire underneath to keep the juice temperature high and boiling. The cooking of the juice is where the historic art and craft of making molasses becomes important. If you cook molasses too long, it will taste strong and be thick. If you cook it too short, it will not be done and remains runny. As the greenish juice bubbles and boils, the impurities float to the top and must be skimmed off the juice. If you don’t skim the impurities off, they will cook into the molasses and make a bitter taste.