When I was a kid–many many years ago–just a few miles from us lived a gentleman who made sorghum and daddy would at some point make a special trip to buy 3 or 4 gallon or more sized jugs (he always gave one jug away to somebody-my grandparents or a neighbor). The jugs were a see through green and I think at one time they must have been used to put homemade booze in as the opening was no bigger around than a quarter or little larger with the glass having been molded down from the opening with a round finger hole (hold) for slipping your finger through it and hoist it up on your arm in order to tip it up to your mouth to take a drink, often a cork was used rather than a lid—I poorly described the action I am sure you have seen done before with these types of jugs especially in old westerns…..on that same sorghum ‘run’ daddy would go on down the road a few more miles and get two fifty pound toe-sack bags of peanuts–again he gave one away and we kept one….so now we were set for the winter to have enough sorghum for our biscuits and cornbread for 9 people, and peanuts for roasting on special nights as a great snack and of course mama used some of the raw peanuts for making brittle come Christmas time. Long after the old man who made sorghum died and I was growing up you could still see the wood though slightly falling apart from the ‘mill’ I presume it is called where the mule would walk around and around in endless circles until all the grinding was done and in my minds eye I see it still today and could probably take you to the exact spot in his pasture where it stood….many jugs of goodness came out of that man and mule’s hard work to delight tastebuds all around our county.
—Gaylia Green
I love sorghum syrup. Pap and Granny always just called it syrup. Every fall of the year Pap would buy a box of sourwood honey and a box of sorghum syrup.
The honey had the comb in it and us kids liked to chew on it like gum.
Until the jars were gone Granny kept one of each on the kitchen table. While I liked them both the syrup was definitely my favorite.
I hope you enjoyed Gaylia’s memories as much as I do.
Last night’s video: The Rich Colorful Language of Appalachia.
Tipper
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Brings back memories of being at my Aunt Margie’s and Uncle Virgil’s house. We would have a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and homemade biscuits along with the sorghum and honey on the table. Such good memories!
I have never had sorghum syrup, I suspect that it a regional thing. But chewing on honeycomb was a treat! We did get it in a box as it was cut in a square. We seldom had gum so chewing on the wax after all the honey was gone was like chewing gum and tastier than the wax sda bottle candy!
The long pole that attaches the horse to the mill is called a sweep. Everybody thinks that only mules can pull the sweep but my people used horses and oxen too. Even humans can pull it if necessary.
I have a lot of knowledge about such things (learned from experience, not from reenactments, books, movies or TV) that I would be willing to share but it seems nobody wants to listen.
Ed, I know I’m not alone in enjoying your comments 🙂 Please write us a guest post about making sorghum syrup!
I agree!!! Ed, please write!!
Ed-I’ll listen…I’ve seen Belgian horses use d in Hancock County!
I would love your knowledge of syrup making… My papaw and grandma had a sorghum syrup mill but by the time I got old enough to remember things they were too old to do it anymore. My grandpa was 26 years older than my grandma and she was his only wife. They had 7 children. So if you do the math, I was born 1971 and papaw was born 1894. He died in 1982. But I sure would have loved learning from them. My grandma said that was the hottest job she ever done though but she loved the syrup and her apple stack cakes were the best! ❤
Cousin Ed,
You should write a little every day, if only to make lists of things you intend to write about. I do this. I doubt that anything I write is worth publishing (other than the odd op ed pieces I indite), but it’s a legacy for my daughter and my nieces and nephews.
Add me to the list of those who would enjoy reading things you can share.
Bringing back fond memories of my dad pouring sorghum on a large pat of butter, mixing it together then piling it on my mom’s hot biscuits. I order it online now and enjoy it as my daddy did so long ago. Thanks for the memories. Never really knew how it was made. Very interesting.
Thank you, Gaylia, for sharing your wonderful memories. I have never had sorghum syrup before. The only reason I have even tasted molasses is because I needed it for a recipe. I think I have missed out—and need to look for some sorghum soon! Growing up, my mama always bought Aunt Jamima’s syrup for our pancakes and French toast. If we were out, she would make homemade syrup using brown sugar. I loved it. Mama always made lots of elderberry and blackberry jelly for our biscuits, as well as, fresh churned butter. Nowadays, we keep plenty of honey, as we raise bees. I also buy maple syrup anytime I see fresh at a country market or fair. I definitely need to try sorghum.
I have never heard of making syrup out of brown sugar and I think it is a great idea, you I’ll have that slight molasses taste. Probably much better than pancake corn syrup. Do try sorghum, it is a very unique, rich, dark taste that I love. I can’t decide if I like it or cane syrup best!
Tipper, my Daddy said they always had sorghum or ribbon cane. They grew sugar cane.
Regarding colorful language, I so wish I had been able to record my Uncles and Aunts talking. They were all raised in NE MS or ETN. My one Uncle who moved to Maryland had a beautiful strong accent, different than his other brothers. Two of my Mother’s sisters had unique southern musical accents. One lived in Tupelo, MS., and the other lived in Holly Springs, MS. None of their other sisters had such a beautiful deep southern accent.
I always enjoy the diverse comments to your articles. This one caused me to try to remember how old I was when I learned that what was called molasses was actually sorghum. I recall needing to look up sorghum in the dictionary.
Several things:
First, my only experience of making sorghum syrup was a demonstration at the NC State Fair in the Village of Yesteryear exhibit. They had a mule on the mill and syrup pan over a wood fire. I haven’t been to the NC State Fair in more than 30 years. I don’t know if the Village of Yesteryear remains. I think the fair run starts next week (maybe the week after); so if anyone goes let us know if they still have the exhibit. The World Series was always on fair week, and you could count on the first frost happening during that week. Many years – before they paved many of the ‘streets’ on the fairgrounds, heavy rains would make a mire out of the midway are. Tons of shavings and sawdust were applied but only seemed to make it worse.
Next, those glass jugs that were mentioned might as likely have first been used for CocaCola syrup (or other liquids used by pharmacists). For those who never saw them, soda fountains had devices that had the syrup in them and connections to carbonated water (soda or sody water). A ‘soda jerk’ would put ice in a glass and pull or ‘jerk’ the handle to make you a glass of coke. The glass jugs were discarded. I used to get them when the drug store tossed them out. They came 4 to a box. I’d ask the soda jerk to open the box on 3 sides leaving the lid to hinge. That way the box lid covered the jugs keeping trash and vermin from having easy access. I don’t know when (or if) they stopped putting Coca Cola syrup in glass jugs, but I know they were still doing so in the 1960s.
Finally, Randy mentioned taking the corks out of bottle caps. When I was a kid just after WWII, we had a corner grocery store and would, like Randy, get the owner to let us empty the catch cans that were on the drink boxes. We would carefully remove the corks and would sometimes find a ‘free’ this or that offer. Most often we would make ‘buttons’ out of them by pressing the cork into the cap from the underside of our shirts making the caps appear as buttons. Some kids got very creative at doing so. The other use we made of bottle caps was to make boot scrapers. We tacked the caps to boards in a row, side by side, then put cross strips on the bottom of the boards to form a rectangle. They made a good place to scrape mud off shoes before entering any place that looked askance at muddy floors.
Thanks for the memories!!!!
Have you ever heard of driving a nail through bottle cap avec the cork and using it to hold down metal roofing?
Robert, for a while my paternal grandaddy worked in a small country store at Due West, SC. He would bring the caps home and use them for target practice for him and grandmother to shoot at with a pistol. She was as deadly as him. But the thing I remember most is of him driving a nail through the center of them and making his own nails like the ones we now buy with a plastic “flat washer style ring.” These nails are often used to nail down roofing felt. I have heard these nails called simplex nails.
Yes, Randy and Ed, I have seen bottle caps used to hold down felt roofing. I’ve also used them for target practice. I had a Monkey Wards .22 when I was 10 years old. Bottle caps were a favorite target. I had to walk about 4 miles to get out of town to where I could use the rifle safely. Now that place, beyond city limits then, is about 15 miles from the current city limits.
I never used bottle caps for pistol practice. I didn’t get a pistol ’til I was grown and have always practiced on a firing range. I can still hit bullseye on targets that is about the size of a bottle cap.
Just disregard my reply. It seems I am unwanted and unnecessary here.
Since I wrote about driving nails through the caps, I feel like your reply might be directed at me. Look at the time of my reply to Robert and the time of your reply, how am I suppose to know what you or someone else has replied until their reply gets posted?
I have no idea what caused that to rise up in you, Ed; but I can assure you that you are both necessary and wanted here.
Nothing I said was directed at you! I felt I was intruding in a conversation between you and Robert. This blog is not set up that way and I tend to forget that. It isn’t a chatroom and I appreciate that immensely.
I swore off reading comments but sometimes I slip up and this is a perfect example of what happens. I’ll try harder.
So enjoyed reading everyone’s wonderful stories & memories !!! Such a sweet start to the day !!! 🙂
My Granny grew up in Kentucky (she was born in 1911) and I remember her telling me about the process of sorghum-making: the mule walking in a circle and the big pot full of the bubbling syrup, the stalks of sugar cane which they would sometimes suck on. Even though I grew up in Maryland, she lived with us, and each year her son would send her a jar of sorghum and we would have it often for Sunday breakfast, with butter cut into it and on biscuits. Sometimes she would add a little baking soda to it to froth it up, but I liked it better just straight from the jar with butter. She would sometimes make what she called sugar syrup for us to have with buttered biscuits, too–she would reduce sugar to a delicious light brown syrup. Such good memories!
I have vivid memories of my dad and my uncle making molasses when I was a wee lad growing up in Madison County. My dad grew the cane and then in the fall, they would drag out this huge press with a long pole on top. One of our horses was hitched to the pole and slowly walked around the circle turning the press. My dad or my uncle would feed the cane stalks into the press. My job was to remove all the blades to prepare the stalks for the press. The juices were collected into buckets and transferred to a large square metal box with long wooden handles on two sides that my uncle had made. The metal box was placed over an open fire which heated and eventually boiled down the juices making them thick and amber. The finished molasses was then ladled into quart jars and stored away. The last step was enjoying the cooled-but not yet cold-molasses over buckwheat pancakes.
Thank you, Gaylia for sharing your memories. Growing up, we always had molasses, and I remember we would mix it up with either butter or peanut butter and oh it was so good with mama’s biscuits. I still buy it but seems like it just doesn’t taste like it used to.
I vaguely remember having sorghum syrup as a child, then it became molasses, which had a very different taste and got to be more commonly used but with a bit of difference in taste. I thought they both were the same thing but later learned they came from two different sources – even though both were canes. I don’t know if one can still buy sorghum up here in my part of western Canada as I only see molasses on store shelves. I understand sorghum is healthier than molasses. Thanks for sharing this Tipper and have a great weekend – may it be a gentle one for Granny.
I should add to my earlier post that for many brands, glass containers for syrup and honey gave way to plastic in my later and current life.
I’m curious, Tipper, about those “boxes” you mentioned. All the syrup and honey I’ve ever seen for sale came in glass bottles or jars. I do remember the first milk I saw in waxed cardboard “boxes.” I was as amused as I was amazed. Footnote: syrup was “sirp” around our house. Who needs two syllables when one will do?
Gene, I should have been more specific 🙂 It was a box full of jars filled with honey and syrup.
Always enjoyed hot homemade biscuits with sorghum (with butter mixed into it)!
Yum!!!
Sorghum making is still alive and well in my area. The couple a few houses down the road, best known for their festive syrup-making get-togethers, where everyone was welcome, passed away several years ago, and so did the tradition. I’ve never been to the big to-do on the main highway about two or three miles from here. My best friend’s 80 something year old daddy just attended the event, and we should have too, as he could have explained all the old-timey procedures.
Debbie, I don’t know where you live but the best source in Tn is at Muddy Pond. The Guenther family makes enough for their store, the shops in the GSMNPark and many others, as well as selling when they do demonstrations. Mark and Sherry are at Cades Cove in the Smokies now demonstrating how to make it. They are on many videos of the process on YouTube if anyone is interested. Just look them up. Their sorghum is delicious! Drama, you brought back a memory of those choking big Sugar Daddys I bought for a nickel from the rolling store that came by my grandmother’s house every Friday. I don’t remember knowing anyone who made sorghum when I was growing up but I learned what I missed when I was an adult. My daddy had honey bees and Mama made lots of jellies and jams for our sweetener.
Oh, yes. I had a friend, much older than me, who would take me with her to visit her family in Oklahoma. Her dad showed me how to mix butter and sorghum for my biscuits and over 30 years later I still love sorghum. (I grew a bit this year with my zinnias.) He also got mad at me for putting a jug of “healing” water from Sulphur in his refrigerator. Hard to find around here where the sorghum stopped around the same time as hemp, I’m told. And , like everything else, expensive to order online so, like many other things, I do without.
It is for sure that time of year. The warm days & cool nights are back again and the October full harvest moon is on the 6th. Time to get those favorite local apples to, the ones that never reach the grocery chains. There is a sorghum festival up at Blairsville, GA this month as well. I’m sure I’ve posted before but Dad always liked to have sorghum around, but he was particular. He didn’t like “strong” sorghum. I never did know enough about sorghum making to know the various ways it could be “ruint”. Got too hot and not stirred enough are two ways I think. You all have made me hungry this morning and that doesn’t happen much anymore.
Would you believe I have never had sorgum syrup?
I want to get some, but it is not done here, and online is pretty pricey. I will likely get some sometime and I can’t wait. ❤️ Yum! I wonder what can be used as a substitute for it in recipes for the meantime.
We used to go to the sorghum festival every year in Blairsville Ga. and buy the syrup as soon as it was bottled and was still warm
Sorghum making used to be demonstrated at the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival in Virginia, but they haven’t done it recently and I’ve had to resort to buying mine in our local stores. It’s made by an independent company, so it’s good but not as good as what was sold at the festival. I love molasses and butter on a hot biscuit!
In Muddy Pond Tennessee, close to Crossville, making sorghum is a daily thing. It’s a day trip taken by many from my area. In a couple of weeks John Ward from the Appalachian channel will be filming from Muddy Pond.
Today the seniors from my church will be making their yearly trip to the farmers market in Asheville for those NC apples. Hopefully they will have some September Wonders!
Also, enjoyed reading Gaylia’s memories!
Brenda, the seniors from my church went last week to Hendersonville to get apples. They always eat dinner/ lunch at a restaurant they like in Hendersonville. Our preacher likes to tease them and say “it’s more of an eating trip for some than an apple trip.”
Randy – your preacher is right!! Us senior Baptist love to eat..one enjoyment we’ve got left..and good fellowship!
I too love sorghum syrup but it’s my second favorite behind ribbon cane. We have the Heritage Syrup Festival every fall in Henderson, Texas. It’s quite an event. Watching that old mule walking in a circle and seeing that juice flowing out of the press into the vat boiling the syrup is something that never gets old. Especially to the taste buds. I couldn’t wait to get my can of syrup home to a big old pan of cathead biscuits slathered with butter and syrup poured over them.
Thanks for sharing this story.
I have eaten Sorghum syrup all my life and still do. There isn’t a lot of things better than a hot buttered biscuit sopped in Sorghum with a little butter cut into it. These days, I buy mine from some Amish folks down in the “valley” (Tennessee River Valley the link is https://dutchovenbakery.info/ ). When I was about 12-13 we planted a large patch of Sorghum of 5-6 acres. We planted, plowed, hoed, and cut the patch. One of my cousins took the cut cane to Walker County just south of us who had a mill. The man cooked it out and took his pay in syrup. We had syrup for years. I think my grandparents wanted to do this for “old times sake” and so us kids could see how it was done. I am proud they did.
I love this! It’s so important that we learn where things come from (and it’s not the store lol).
I love sorghum! I buy enough jars to last a year. This year our supplier is not sure he’ll have any due to the drought conditions. He has the best in my opinion. I’ve looked high and low for another supplier and can’t find any. I’m willing to drive a long way for good sorghum. Unfortunately, it’s becoming a lost art here in our area. We did drive past some fields of sorghum and it was beautiful. Still hoping I can find some. It’s a staple for us.
Momma always spoke of how this was one their favorite times of year. I loved hearing her stories of how it was worked up.
Making molasses was common when I was growing up. My granddaddy Franklin lived next door up the road and made the best molasses in the county. It is a long process but everyone in the family and neighbors loved to pitch in. Of course moms and daddy kept a careful eye on us kids around those hot bats of syrup. All his tools were homemade and he knew just when to scoop that foam off and the precise method of moving and stirring it. We loved chewing on those sticks. Like most kids, we didn’t get treats very often. However, daddy gave every one of us 7 kids that were in school a nickel every morning and Elmer Huskey’s grocery store was right beside the school. I would tell myself that I wasn’t going to spend it until my bus ride back home in the evening but it was to tempting to hold on to. Just walking in that old store brings back such good memories. You could get a Sugar Daddy back then that would choke a horse for a nickel. It would last all day. Cokes were .three cents and they were so strong that the fizz out of them would strangle you. Hope granny is well today. God bless and thanks for the memories.
Drama, I remember the Sugar Daddy. I didn’t get much candy when growing up but I think my favorite would be a Baby Ruth. Back then you could get one at least twice as big as today for about a dime. I wrote about this before. At the local country store during the summer time when the candy was kept in a glass front wooden cabinet, you had to be careful before biting down into a candy bar, it might have worms in it. We just kept exchanging the candy bars until we found one that didn’t have worms. Today that would be unthinkable. The store owner would let us children get the caps of the drinks that had been bought and opened at the drink cooler, go outside and remove the cork hoping we could find one that would give us a free drank. In my area, both drank or Coke meant any brand of today’s soft drinks.
We always just call it syrup as well. I love mixing butter with it and eating in on biscuits. We don’t get it like we used to, I hope it doesn’t go away.
I have a jar of both sorghum syrup and sourwood honey on my table right now. Hot buttered biscuits ( not canned) and either the syrup or honey make for some good eating. I often times “work up some butter” in my syrup. Karo syrup or pancake syrup IS NOT sorghum syrup. I have also heard this syrup called molasses. A lot of years around Oct. 26 ( our anniversary) my wife and I would take a trip up to the Chimney Rock area of NC, we would buy some apples, mountain cabbage, and always a quart jar of sourwood honey. Some years we would go to the Burnsville area and spend a couple of nights at the Nu Wray Inn at Burnsville. Now that I no longer have her, I buy NC apples and mountain cabbage at a local produce store and my son buys me sourwood honey from a NC vendor at the Pickens Jockey Lot. On these trips, I would always buy extra cabbage to give to some of our older neighbors. There is a law somewhere that makes it mandatory for SC flat landers to go to the Hendersonville, NC area and buy apples and mountain cabbage in the fall of the year!