Back Again

It has been several days since I posted because of things going on in the here and now. Will get back to the stories now.
Today I will tell about some fun days of growing up on the farm: The cane mill and syrup making!
My Daddy had a contraption with a tall ( it looked tall to me, a small child) standing in a spot and the contraption had an arm ( of wood or metal, I don't know) sticking out for a pretty long way and fastened to a mule somehow. The mule would walk around and around and around in a circle.  The stalks of cane were fed into the contraption on one side by someone and the juice would be squeezed out into containers.

The cane juice was good to drink. (I never was a big fan of cane juice, but most people were). It would be jugged up and I guess the people that brought their cane to Daddy to be processed into juice/syrup, would take theirs home, sell it, or either let Daddy make cane syrup out of it for their families, etc.
Daddy also had a syrup making contraption fixed up to cook syrup.This consisted of several large square pans set up in descending order. There was a fire under each pan. The juice was placed in the pan at the top of the set of pans. When it had cooked to the right consistency, it was released into the next lower pan and cooked until it also reached the proper consistency for the next pan. When it reached the bottom pan and cooked until it was thick it was put into syrup cans and a lid placed on it.  It was very sweet and so good on biscuits or pancakes or to cook some things with.
This is sort of what it looked like:

It was a fun day when there was cane milling day! There was always a lot of people around and kids, kids, kids!!!   We always had fun watching the mule plodding around and around all day long!!! Seeing the cane juice coming out, sipping some and the syrup was really something to watch. And of course we ran and played and hollered and had fun just being together.
In the first few pans there would be foam and they would skim it off. This would go on until there was no more foam and it became smooth, sweet syrup. If you let it set in the cans too long it would turn to sugar, just as honey and syrup that you buy today will do.
I am not sure if the women cooked for everybody on those days, but I suspect they did and syrup making took a long time. I was so young that I am not sure I have every thing just exactly right, but I do remember watching all these things going on.
I hope that you all are enjoying my journey through the past. More to come!!!
By the way, don't be upset with the dates on these posts, I have to go backwards with the dates to make them be in order as they happened.
See ya later.......