Huff, puff and make sorghum

The sight made Jean Purcell slow her car until it had come to a complete stop on the Madison County road.

What caught her eye that November morning in 1959 was the “awkward piece of equipment” puffing away in the middle of a field several hundred yards away. The Daily Progress reporter could see several men busily engaged in some sort of activity that appeared to be centered around a sheet metal smokestack.

Dark smoke rising from the stack, as well as hazy steam coming from somewhere else, made it impossible for her to see exactly what was going on. Her first thought was that the men were cooking a batch of moonshine, but she quickly dismissed that theory.

Operating as they were in the center of an open field, the men obviously had no concern about detection. With her keen sense of curiosity abuzz, she parked her car on the shoulder of the rural road.

What’s up?

After gathering her notebook and camera, the reporter trooped over to see what was going on. When she reached the site of operations, she was greeted by Dewey Hoffman, Coleman Clore, Haywood Mallory and Dan Sims.

Hoffman, the impresario of the operation, informed her that they were in the process of making sorghum molasses. And, as the other men noted, Hoffman was known throughout the county for his expertise in such matters.

Sorghum molasses, also known as sweet sorghum, is made from sorghum cane, which looks much like corn stalks without the ears. During later research Purcell discovered that sorghum entered its golden age during the Civil War, because of a scarcity of sugar.

Sweet tooth

People quickly acquired a taste for it, and it became a popular sweetener. By the early 1900s, an estimated 20 million gallons of sorghum syrup were being produced in the Southern states each year.

But as Purcell quickly learned, the process to make it is very labor intensive. A sharp decline in farm labor after World War II reduced the production of sorghum syrup to a trickle.

By the time the reporter ventured out into the farm field in 1959, the production of sorghum molasses had become as rare as draft animals pulling plows and wagons. But like most people trying to keep a part of the past alive, Hoffman was happy to show Purcell how to make sorghum molasses.

The first thing that had to be done was to “set” a long, shallow tray made of galvanized metal on top of a brick-lined furnace that ran beneath the entire length of the tray. Hoffman said the best wood to fire the furnace was pine or chestnut, but never oak, as

it “just wouldn’t do.”

The pan, as it also was called, had to be set with precision so the end where the cane juice first dropped into it was about a half-inch higher than the end into which the finished syrup flowed.

Other steps included in the setting of the pan was digging a hole into which the green skim from the raw juice would be scraped when it first reached the pan. Placed at the other corner at the top of the pan was a large wooden tub that would hold the raw juice after it had been skimmed.

A faucet in the tub allowed a controlled flow of juice onto the hot pan. At the far end of the pan was another container with a strainer on top that caught the boiling syrup.

The machine that had caught Purcell’s eye was the mill that included heavy rollers that crushed the juice out of the cane as it is fed through. The mill, originally designed to be turned by a team of horses, had belonged to Hoffman’s father.

The son had adapted it to be used with the power takeoff on a tractor. Even with the added power, he cautioned the workers never to feed more than four stalks into the mill at a time or “it will kill the motor every time.”

The operation was taking place on the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Thornton L. Berry, in the western section of Madison County.

Mrs. Berry readily admitted that her experience in sorghum molasses making was, and probably would remain, limited to that year’s project.

Nonetheless, she offered her theory on how to decide when to cut the cane.

“It’s a matter of intuition,” Mrs. Berry said. “You go out to the field and say, ‘uhmmm, I believe it’s going to frost.’

“And then you say, ‘Uhmmm, I believe it’s going to be a good day to cut the cane.’ It’s a matter of instinct, like cutting hay.”

After Purcell was educated on the basics of the operation, she stood back and watched. Two of the men kept busy feeding cane stalks into the mill, as another man periodically drove up with wagon loads of cut cane.

Another worker had the job of skimming the “poison” green stuff off the liquid as it spread over the tray. The liquid was slowed by metal dividers that stretched almost across the pan.

Hoffman was stationed at the far end of the pan, where he stirred the thickening liquid with a wooden paddle. He had the important job of making the decision when the liquid had become molasses and needed to be taken off.

“When it strings, it’s done,” Hoffman said.

A collection of jars, jugs and tins had been assembled to hold the finished product. When the mill finally ground to a halt, an acre and a half of sorghum cane had produced about 60 gallons of molasses.

Everyone involved in the hard work felt their labor had been well worth it. As sorghum fanciers, they said the product far surpassed any other type of molasses.

One of the connoisseurs said it made an excellent substitute for milk when making biscuits. Another person shared a recipe for making sweet potato pudding with sorghum as one of the main ingredients.

Purcell’s curiosity had gotten her a darn good story, and a peek into the past. But the best part came when Mrs. Berry appeared with a large platter of homemade rolls.

Everybody slathered a roll with a generous amount of syrup still hot from the pan. The resulting grins of satisfaction and smacking of lips declared this particular batch of sorghum molasses to be of excellent quality.