Monday, September 28, 2015

Long Shot







This past weekend Hubby and I took a trip on what is called the Heritage Harvest Tour.  What you do is drive along a designated route and visit old churches and farms that are part of the tour.  This year there were 10 stops.  Most of the churches had a meal and crafts for sale.  The farms had pumpkins, crafts, and baked goods for sale.  The one thing that we bought, along the tour, was a few jars of sorghum.

"What is sorghum?" you ask.  Well, sorghum is something like molasses.  In fact, some people call is sorghum molasses.  The difference is that sorghum comes from the actual sorghum plant instead of sugar cane.  Sorghum cane looks a lot like corn as it grows.  Instead of corn on the cob, sorghum makes grains on top of the plant.

These seeds can actually be popped like popcorn.  It doesn't pop as big as popcorn, but it's pretty tasty.  Kind of has a sweet taste too. The seeds can also be made into flour.  In fact some sorghum flour is used for people who have a wheat allergy.

Anyway, we are going to use the sorghum plant to make sorghum syrup from it.  We have grown it before and had someone else make the sorghum syrup for us, but we want to be able to do it ourselves.  The hardest part in making it yourself is finding the mill. (top picture)  Most of these old mills haven't been in use for so long that people just scrap them.  It about makes me cry just thinking about it.  All of these old mills are just tossed just like they were nothing.  When in actuality, they helped many families make extra money to help them through the winter.

So, I'm going to just put it out there that we are looking for a sorghum mill and/or pan.  I know it's a long shot, but I have to try.  We would like to have it set up and running by next fall if at all possible.  That way we would know to plant the sorghum plants this spring.  So if someone out there in Blog Land would know where we could get one of these sorghum mills, or if you would happen to be one of those people who have one that their grandparents used and would like for it to be used again, please contact me.

So until next time,

Small Farm Girl, long shot taker


P.s.  These pictures were taken off the Internet.

6 comments:

Sunnybrook Farm said...

They have the ones that are turned by a horse or mule around here, I think that they might be making some new version of them, maybe the Amish? So you might find a small one of some kind. Sorghum molasses is not near the taste of the nasty stuff they call molasses in the grocery store, it is more like honey, I use it on yogurt and it goes well with cornbread.

DFW said...

They use sorghum as a cover crop near my country house. I'll be up there this weekend, at a family reunion & will ask around.

small farm girl said...

Sunnybrook, we would be happy for one of the horse turning kind. Hubby could rig it up to run somehow. Lol. And YES, sorghum taste a LOT better than molasses.

small farm girl said...

DFW, thank you very much! They made it around here for a while. There still is a few people that do, but you just can't find the mills anymore.

Vera said...

Hope you find your mill, and I think it is great that you are trying to carry on an old tradition.

MC said...

There is an antique sorghum mill for sale on Ebay right now - pricey and may need refurbishing.