Making Sorghum Molasses~ From Field to the Jar

hi neighbors and welcome to miracle farm 1927 homestead we are excited for you to be with us today because we're finally getting started on the sorghum and uh it's been years since we've done this and uh we're just raring to get ready but we're not actually going to do it for several days but we got to get started and what we're doing today is you can see there are some of the smaller ones that's fallen down and they're all in our way for getting down the uh aisles because we've got to pull off all the leaves and so today it's a little early so we're going to go ahead and nip off the ones that are bending over so in all the rows and go ahead and strip them back and get them ready for the day that we squeeze them so come along with us and uh like i said we are we're tickled that you're with us and uh we'll get this job done so we came out here with our hand nippers thinking that we would be able to cut them off from the bottom where they've fallen over and these little ones we'd possibly be able to do it but the bigger ones it wasn't cutting it you can't even get around it so luckily i have some burley tobacco hatchets the one i have my boss actually just gave me this past summer to reminisce on our tobacco day so i grew burly and we cut their stalks with this hatchet right here and petey he has a hatchet that i bought at a flea market a couple years ago so even though tobacco is not grown in our county anymore we're still using the tools that our ancestors used on the same land not too long ago so this is the handiest tool for this job so i'm going to toss them useless sniffers over show you how simple this tool makes this job now these are the ones in the patch that's just been bending over so we can't get through the um aisles to do some stripping so uh we're just going ahead and cutting them off and we're going to take the heads off and strip them off the trailer but there's a bunch of them i can't believe how many there are we have got one row already started stripping and this is the first row here and joey's going to go down through there and show you how he strips the leaves off because you don't want those leaves going through your squeezer they take up they make extra bulk and there's no juice in those leaves so they just look like stalks so we're going to do about four rows in this first squeezing and uh so these four rows will be completely naked before we get started we've just finished the first four rows and we got all of this this is a lot of sorghum righteous is bringing out the last little bit and these were just the ones that were bent over that's not even touching the ones that are standing straight up so we're going to study these heads and look at them and maybe taste the uh stalk with looks like it doesn't look like vampire i was trying to get it off we're back out here this evening uh finishing up getting the um uh ones that's been over and we're going to start doing a little bit more stripping and we got papaw out here and he's cutting the heads off where this time we're stripping them in the field and laid them on the trailer and he just grabs them and cuts the heads off for us so we don't have to bend over and do that we got that whole trailer done yes well yesterday and i finished it this evening can you get this one oh well everybody else is in the it doesn't look like much until you look down here at the end you see him in there there way down in there we are just fixing to start stripping these things and uh the problem is is they're about 15 foot tall and my children have outgrown me so they're going to show you how far they can reach and i'm a little shorter than they are so i'm probably going to be a video in them while they do a lot of it i can do the shorter ones but this is the next step uh and we've cleaned out all the ones that were fell over now we can go down the rows real quick and just strip them down and then after that we'll cut them off so this is the next step so thank you for joining us [Music] [Music] uh [Music] do [Music] so [Music] yay we're done now let's see what it looks like all stripped looks like a bamboo jungle [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i'll tell you what happened our student came today lane over there on the other side and uh we're homeschooling him with righteous they're the same age and there's a hurricane coming in on saturday so instead of uh sitting at books day we're doing a little uh agriculture science out here hands-on approach so he's backing up down the road because we haven't got nowhere here on the side to pull the tractor and don't want to run over any cane so he backs up to his workers the two at the front are cutting off the heads the two right there at the end of the trailer tony and lane are pulling off the leaves that were too tall for us to get and miracle and righteous are cutting the stalks with the tobacco cutters [Music] so [Music] [Music] married about how they are next to a man up the first load for the first batch of sorghum ever grown on this farm we're tickled to death you put one in the top and one in the bottom so this is the machine that we found the other week and then we're borrowing make sure feed all that in there two at a time [Applause] [Music] it's just running the bottom [Music] take your piece on the inside pay up a second [Music] [Applause] so down [Applause] hold up hogwarts after them runs in i gotta change the pot [Music] hey all right all right in there how are y'all doing we're good well nice to meet y'all oh well there you go [Music] is molasses what we're doing now we're we're skimming the uh chlorophyll off the top of it and uh the steam that's coming off of it now that's that's the water leaving it and it's got to get all the water cooked out so it'll turn to sugar we're cooking all the water and all we want left is sugar all you want okay i think let's take your truck no yeah that's what we're doing [Music] i'll here against you and that white truck right there it ain't very fast well then i don't have to worry about losing huh he may be a sore loser oh he's an expert so so what joey's doing now is the molasses as it cooks down it's starting to turn brown instead of green it gets suds on the top of it and he's scooping them off because they're all full of different little sediments that uh are not gritty but they they're not liquid either so the whole time that you're um cooking you're cleaning those off so even though we strained it really really well putting it in here there's still a lot that come and as it boils they actually come to the top instead of the bottom and what i was doing is our fire for some reason isn't quite level and down there at the end it's boiling real heavy so i was just stirring it to get uh it boiling up here got a roaring fire going under here today has been a perfect day it's been cloudy so it's a little bit more than halfway done we're in our last few minutes of straining and stirring it's just starting to thicken up pretty good still got some stuff coming off the top but soon we'll start getting some foam and we'll leave that on the top because it's part of the flavor [Music] chatty's over at the end checking the temperature when it gets up to 230 degrees on the cooler end it should be starting to get done how much is it up to daddy [Music] it's 212. it's been 212 for a little while but we haven't stoked up the fire in a good bit but we got some nice coals under there [Music] okay we're showing you where this foam right here is not done and this this is getting done because it's dark brown over here in the corner it's not done so i want to keep stirring it around [Music] the titans temperature difference in the [Music] syrup so petey's over here cooling it off with water pushing it back to the jar [Music] bringing it in at the tail end we're about to run out of jars [Music] you

Channel: Miracle Farm 1927 Homestead

Views: 211,309

Keywords: sorghum syrup, sorghum harvest, sorghum molasses, sorghum making, sorghum mill, molasses, working together, homesteading, cane mill, molasses vat, homesteading family, homesteading life, homesteaders on youtube

Id: 8fYBjrlY1k4

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020