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Making Syrup in Florida
(Food #11b, June 28, 2003)
Six hundred miles south of Hurtsboro things are a little bit different.
It was a few days after Christmas, before seven in the morning, and I was on my way to the house of friends, Irvin and Lynn Nobles, in Christmas, Florida. It was to be a combination syrup cook and church fish fry.
The Nobles family is interesting. They're Christians, to begin with, and they're good examples of the kind of hospitable people Christians are supposed to be.
Today's syrup making was after Christmas because our first frost came a little later than that up north. When I arrived, cane grinding was well underway.
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 The mills in Hurtsboro had been horizontal units run from a direct tractor power takeoff. It was a very efficient way to produce lots of juice quickly in a compact area. |
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Irvin has his own cane patch, so all the cane was the same, a yellowish variety. As in Hurtsboro, the cane juice came out a sad, gray color, like dishwater. But unlike the juice up north, this was rich and sweet. It was good enough that I didn't mind the occasional twig or leaf I swallowed. Irvin's cow was enjoying it, too, only in a different form—crushed stalks.
 Irvin samples some juice
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Irvin's kettle and firebox was almost exactly like the one in Hurtsboro. Instead of burning wood, though, Irvin had devised a preheated burner that used diesel fuel, enriched (?) with an undetermined amount of used motor oil. The fluffy black ashes from the flame exited the chimney above the roof of the barn's crib, and fell outside like soft, black snow.
Some other things were different here in Florida. Irwin had made the skimmers of fine bronze screen, and there were two of them. As the sugar juice boiled and frothed, the skimmers pulled the foam toward the wide kettle rim where it was wiped away. These fine screens also caught most of the impurities. When they began to clog the skimmers rinsed them in clean water with a hose, tapped them dry, and resumed their work. |
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Irwin's kettle is under the cover of a roof, attached to his barn side to make a covered crib, open on three sides, but partialy screened. As the syrup approached being "done" I noticed that I'd been covered, very lightly, with a thin sugar shell that tickled the hairs on my neck and arms. This, too, was different from Alabama, where the kettle had been open-air.
About eleven the cooking was still going strong, and the last of today's cane was going through the mill. I stopped for some fried fish and potatoes and salad. The rain had continued and was now a gentle shower. The air was getting colder; I was getting chilled. After the plate test, Irvin filtered the syrup as they'd done in Alabama. He started by cleaning one of those galvanized job-site water coolers and filling it through the filter cloth with hot syrup from the kettle. Then he valved it into mason jars. Irvin's family would share some of the syrup and use the rest on the table throughout the following year, along with other produce he and Lynn had put up.  Straining after the plate test
I was getting pretty cold by now, so I watched the filling of the first jar, and then I said goodbye for the day to my friends. I'd see them tomorrow morning in church.
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| Making syrup is an all-day event |
In both the Alabama and Florida cookings the day actually comprised two concurrent events: a syrup making, and a party. It made the hard, long work of cane syrup making a lot more enjoyable, especially for the non-participants.
 What else to do with a mudhole?
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| A Simple Test |
Try this simple test as a follow-up to this short report. Visit the syrup section of your supermarket and notice the large variety of syrups on the shelves. Now, find the syrups labeled "cane syrup" and read the ingredient list. You'll notice that most of them contain corn syrup in addition to cane syrup. Real cane syrup has only one ingredient: "sugar cane juice." That's the one to buy.
I've tasted syrup from Georgia and found it to be a little on the light side. Alabama and Florida syrups are richer, fuller, and a little darker in color. I attribute the differences to the kind of cane used and the know-how of the makers. One cane syrup, though, is clearly the very best you can find. It's rich and deeply dark, almost black. But it's not molasses—it's Louisiana cane syrup from C. S. Steen's mill in Abbeville, Louisiana. It'll be in a brown bottle or a can with a traffic-yellow label. |
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