Old Timey Fun

This past Saturday was a Cane Grinding and Cooking demo at www.pioneerfloridamuseum.org in Dade City. My Grandpa used to grow a small patch of sugar cane in his orange groves and he would give his cane to the local grinders in exchange for some freshly made cane syrup. Nothing better in this world for putting on pancakes, biscuits, cornbread, heck your finger, than cane syrup! And Grandpa always had a stalk of cane with knife at the ready to cut you off a piece to chew. And we'd chew that piece til every last drop of sweetness was gone and chew it some more! It's one of my fondest memories of Grandpa.

So I decided to venture to Dade City and see if I could get some syrup and more importantly, a stalk of cane to chew in Grandpa's memory. Well watching cane juice being boiled into syrup is not a whole lot more interesting than watching paint dry. Only difference with watching paint dry is you usually (ptooey) don't have (ptooey) the advantage of (ptooey) also watching old men (ptooey) spitting terbacky (ptooey) juice every ten seconds. Ptooey!

There was also a small gathering of folks playing banjo, guitar, fiddle and bass and they were very entertaining. There was a syrup tasting with 17 different contendors. I did my civic duty and tasted each and every one and voted for my favorite. I did manage to find syrup AND a stalk of cane for sale, so I came home a happy camper!

                                            couple of old tractors

                                           stalks of cane being ground to juice by mule power

                                            old cane grinders

                                               boiling of the juice

                                                 musicians at play

                                            I LOVED the lady on the rights turquiose guitar!

                                            As Grandpa used to call it...a Harra disk (harrow) was pulled behind the tractor in between the rows of citrus trees to chop down the weeds. An especially dirty, dusty job if the rains hadn't started yet!

                   17 bottles of syrup on the table, 17 bottles of syrup. Take one down, pass it around...!

                                            Pretty camellia bush outside of one of the old homesteads on the property. I never could get a camellia to live, much less bloom!