Making molasses

This picture shows Gary and Julie using a sorghum press, also called a grinder, to press the liquid out of sorghum cane to boil down to molasses. I think it is Pete in the background who was providing the power that moved the press. I was gone from Farm Yonder when this picture was taken (due to my bad case of histoplasmosis). I viewed this scene as a culmination of self-sufficiency efforts in which I had a hand. While we had prior success in growing a bountiful garden, a goal was to also use as much of the 40 acres of land we had in an agricultural way. Sorghum looks a lot like corn in early summer and many farmers in the area grow it. I think it was widely used in the midwest as a source of sugar until the sugar beet industry in Idaho and the west monopolized sugar production.

One thing hidden in this picture is the story of dealing with insects. I remember that when I first moved to Farm Yonder, mosquitos and chiggers were a terrible problem. They cost me some sleepless nights and a lot of irritation. I forgot exactly how I learned to deal with them, but I do remember one time I dipped a rag in gasoline and wiped my shoes with it, as I thought gasoline was an insect repellent. Maybe we bought repellants. Maybe we got smarter about keeping the place cleaner. Maybe we wore heavier clothes (like Gary in his overalls in the picture). But somehow we learned to cope with the insects and rarely thought about them after we lived there a while.