Cookin’ Sorghum

One of my first outings when I moved to western Kentucky was that I drove up to the lake near Aurora, Kentucky.  They had an arts and crafts festival in the fall.  One of the exhibits they had was cooking sorghum.  I watched for a while.  I might have even bought some sorghum.  I’m sure I didn’t know what it was.

When we were growing up we were never subjected to sorghum molasses.  We ate Karo Syrup on our pancakes, when we had pancakes.  It was the clear syrup.  If we were lucky we got Mrs. Butterworth’s or Aunt Jemimah’s.  Most of the time it was Karo Syrup.

But I liked the idea of cooking sorghum up in Aurora.  They had horses out there circling a contraption they had set up that squeezed the juices out of the sorghum stalks.  The juice was collected in 5 gallon buckets and when it got close to being full one of the guys would take it and pour it into a tray where it was cooked.

This metal tray was made up of six or eight compartments and the juices started on one end and cooked their way to the other end through a maze of metal.  There’s a guy who “stirs” it through.  By the time it got to the other end of this tray it was ready to be siphoned out of the tray into another bucket where it would be poured into quart mason jars.  The foam that came off of the molasses was turned into sorghum suckers.  I’m sure back years ago they were saved as a treat for the kids.  Nowadays I’m sure kids don’t stand in line waiting for them.  They’re sweet but really strong.

My husband’s family used to grow sorghum.  Every fall, after harvest, they would go over to their Uncle Fred’s farm to cook the sorghum.  Everyone worked together and they put up a supply of sorghum to get them through the year.  Back then they pretty much grew what they ate.  Of course, I have heard the stories about how much the kids got to where they hated molasses.  They couldn’t wait until it was all gone so that they could go to the store and buy some Karo Syrup.  In fact, sometimes they were so sick of it that the only thing that could make it edible was mixing it with peanut butter.  To this day my husband puts peanut butter on his pancakes, with his syrup.  It doesn’t matter what kind of syrup, he spreads peanut butter first and then pours syrup over that.

One of my favorite stories that he tells is about his Uncle Fred and sorghum.  Uncle Fred must have been the molasses connosseur.  In fact, he would make so much he had some to sell to passers-by.  He would put the molasses into tin cans.  After his wife, Cecelia died, they had a sale of their farm and property.  Uncle Fred hadn’t put up molasses in years.  Still, they sold some empty tin cans that had never been used that he had saved to put up molasses.  Jimmy brought a couple of those home.  They are treasures.

Anyway, Uncle Fred lived on the main road.  In fact, this highway used to be the way that people would travel from Nashville into Missouri and Illinois.  Years ago country music shows used to travel by bus out of Nashville into Missouri and Illinois.  Porter Waggoner had a bus that used to go on the road, back when Dolly Parton was on the Porter Waggoner Show.  They used to stop at Uncle Fred’s and buy sorghum molasses.  Uncle Fred used to tell the story that he was partly responsible for Dolly Parton’s curves.  I can just imagine him saying that.  He was always a quiet guy but I can hear him saying that.

     

Last fall we had to ride over into Trigg County to pick up something.  We weren’t lost but we didn’t know where we were.  We were relying on the GPS.  As we were riding down this quiet country road we noticed some haflinger draft horses geared up.  We own haflinger horses so we decided on the way back we would stop and talk with the people about their horses.

As we were heading back out to the main highway we slowed down when we saw the horses.  I told Jimmy that those people were cooking sorghum.  I mean, you would have thought that I was raised in the country.  I can’t imagine how I knew that.  We stopped.  They were indeed cooking sorghum.  They raise enough for their family, with a little left over that they share with their neighbors and others in the community.  These were the people who used to set up at Aurora trade days, that I had seen when I first moved down into western Kentucky over 20 years ago.  They didn’t realize that we knew what they were doing but they were very gracious and let me take pictures and even gave us some molasses to take home with us.  They were selling pumpkins so we bought a couple.  They also gave us some sorghum that we could use for seed if we decided to put a crop out next year.  They offered to cook the sorghum for us if we harvest any next year.

                      

You never know what memories are going to surface with a simple drive in the country.