Sorghum

[vfem]

Well after this year I should have syrup, grains for the animals and seeds to start an even bigger crop next year if its successful. Will my jam & canning business if this all whips up and tastes good I will be have an outlet for everything we over produce. Then again, before I get ahead of myself, I should like to see how the crop for 2013 even turns out in the first place.

So off I got on another adventure....

Boy, I sure do have the wild busy life don't I. Makes me wonder how I ever have time to chat online with all my jobs and plants.... and kid... and husband... and animals... and business... and friends... and classes... and dreams....

 

[897tgigvib]

vfem you made me exhausted just thinking of all that. I make a little list of daily chores to try to keep up on
...gotta do a serious clean on my north window...

 

[vfem]

Oh wow... talk about totally sentimental! I guess some things were meant to be. I did a search on google for sorghum mill in NC.

The library of congress returned results of 'Fuquay Springs in 1935' and the sorghum mills and land in the area.

Fuquay Varina used to be Fuquay Springs back in the day, so to think I wanted to do this, and I find that's what used to be around here way back in the day makes me all nostalgic!!!

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004678463/

 

[897tgigvib]

Toldja there'd be a mill somewhere in your county!

But I didn't think there'd be a hundred of them!

Might want to put a classified in your local newspaper asking if anyone has an operating sorghum mill and could you join their milling days, and about groiwing it there and their favorite varieties and stuff

 

[April Manier]

Interestingly enough I was just researching Sorghum flour tonight. I have recently become addicted to different flours. I have really been trying to go wheat free in many ways. Tonight I made banana bread with Sorghum flour in it. It is not a very complete food nutritionally. It has a small amount of amino acids present. It is high on the inflammatory list of foods. By itself it is not a very complete food. It is however, gluten free. And of course it is pretty high in iron as foods go.

We had it come up in our yard one year. Trippy looking plant! What a tenacious plant. I can see how it would be good in temperate zones as a perennial erosion control plant. Please take some photos of your Sorghum journey for us to behold!

 

[897tgigvib]

April do you suppose your sorghum volunteer came from chicken or bird feed?

 

[April Manier]

April do you suppose your sorghum volunteer came from chicken or bird feed?

Not sure. We have farms all around us, but no one is growing it to my knowledge. It was really fun. A southern boy visiting told us what it was!

 

[897tgigvib]

I know that some pigeon feed has both millet and sorghum in it, plus the dried peas and cracked corn, even full dent corn, and pretty sure wheat and barley along with sunflower seeds.

 

[JimWWhite]

We used to grow it when I was a kid. As I remember we had about a quarter of an acre of it out away from the house. In the late fall I remember my Dad handing my brother and me a machete and showing me how to cut it. The next day while he was in town we cut down the entire quarter acre and stacked it on the big wagon we used for for hauling cotton to the gin. It was a big, big pile. Then when he got home we pulled the wagon with the tractor almost 10 miles over to a place next to the highway where a man with a mule in a shed crushed it and then boiled it down to make sorghum syrup. The mule went around and around in this shed and he was turning a stone that crushed the canes and the juice flowed down a bamboo pipe to a row of large shallow pans on a big brick fireplace. It boiled until it turned a deep golden brown and then the man drained it off into silver one gallon cans like paint cans. For some reason I remember we made 12 gallons and we gave the man 4 gallons of the syrup for his service and we went home with the rest. That was enough for us for a full year as I remember.

And for a treat during the winter Mama would make popcorn balls with peanuts we also grew. And that's what I think sorghum syrup tastes like: Old time Cracker Jacks. They had to be made with sorghum. I know it sure was good over buttered biscuits in the morning. And I'm pretty sure sorghum is not the same as sugar cane. I've had both and I think sugar cane has more juice and is sweeter.

 

[vfem]

Wow Jim, if you were trying to seal the deal for me you sure did it!

I didn't grow up in these parts, I grew up in New England. We had Sugar maples everywhere and I remember the fall apple picking followed by the thousands of buckets I saw hanging along the trees down the same roads.... by spring we were picking up the syrup at the same places we picked up cider and apples in the fall.

Those days don't happen here. You have to drive to the mountains to even find apples.

When I read about this, I knew I had missed something good by moving here later in life. However, they just don't do it here like they used to. I've done searches and locally everyone pretty much does tobacco, corn and cotton. The same fields here that used to grow Sorghum haven't seen the crop in generations!

When something starts pulling on my heart strings, I am set to follow....