Muddy Pond Sorghum

[Music] my name is mark Gunther I'm a brother's Pete and Eddie own and operate muddy pond sorghum mill our parents John and Emma came to muddy pond in 1965 along with his parents from Saskatchewan Canada and her parents from Pennsylvania they started making sort of shortly after arriving at muddy pond I do all the field preparation work like plowing and disking with my tractor I like to use a perfectin to do the final ground work it has s tines and a-rollin basket on the back that break up the clods and makes a very smooth fine seed bed ready to plant I have a four roll Mader Mac vacuum cleaner it plans applies fertilizer and sprays a narrow band of herbicide on the rows I Drive three and a half miles per hour I like to have the loader on the tractor with the bucket on it because it counterbalances the tractor the planner is a three-point hitch and is very heavy especially when the 100 gallon spray tank is full I plant six acres of Cain with one tank of herbicide I use super rainbow triple 13 fertilizer super means that it has all the minor elements in it I use about 175 200 pounds of fertilizer per acre I put the fertilizer two inches beside and two inches deeper then the planter puts the seed in I use a two row Amish made riding cultivator mules and horses walk between the ropes there are two sets of rolling shields that straddled the rope and cultivating each side of the rope breaking up the dirt and rolling fine dirt through the fingers of the rolling shields putting fine dirt around the plants I have a steering pedal on each foot that I move on the go as needed left or right to keep the cultivator center on the roads of course I also steer the animals with a line in each hand left to right and also a little speed control with those legs I enjoy working the animals and the reason I can justify that is we do sorghum making demonstrations which we use the animals to power the horse-drawn mill after I planted the cane and it's up two to three inches big I start intently cultivating it I will cultivate it approximately three to four times every week and a week week and a half and post to big holidays does not get up under percent wheats so later on then after its of malaise and I walk through it and top out is three weeds at the cultivating did not get [Music] when the cane is mature we D had the cane the reason for D heading is number one it helps keep the cane from lodging and secondly we feel like it yields more sorghum because the growth goes into the stock making more juice instead of maturing a seed head but number one is to keep the cane from lodging well as for the pressing it works pretty good most of the time we use a 120 horsepower John Deere tractor to pull the press probably a 50 or 60 horsepower tractor could power the meal but the mill weigh approximately 10,000 pounds plus 1,000 gallons of juice behind that weighing approximately 8,000 pounds can make for a very precarious situation on hills even with a big tractor when we're pressing we drive approximately 1/2 mile per hour making 1,000 gallons of juice in an hour 2 hour and 20 minutes sometimes the breakdowns make me wish I was out there with a machete cutting cane by hand [Music] ten years ago we built a press on a sugarcane Harvester thinking it would help us go through the wet conditions better and have found out that big tractor tires stay afloat better than bulldozer tracks the sugarcane cutter has not been used in the last several years [Music] yes it takes a mountain of wood to feed that hungry ball and a lot of work to do so a steam pump pumps the return water back into the ball that also has his troubles and we have an electric backup pump we try to cook at 120 pounds of steam pressure the best day we ever had was in 2018 we cooked 3,600 gallons of juice and made 477 gallons of syrup from 2:00 a.m. in the morning and cleaned up by 5 o'clock in the afternoon we preheat our juice to 160 degrees some days there seems to be a lot more skimmings on the pan than other days the sorghum goes into a 245 gallon stainless steel tank we have two nieces Janelle and Michelle that head up the bottling they show up at about 9:00 a.m. in the morning fetching containers however they have been instructed numerous other nieces and wives show up throughout the day and help with the bottling and boxing and moving the sorghum out they are usually caught up with the bottling when the cooking is through [Music] we also do sorghum making demonstrations this is quite an endeavor we take strip cane would two mules or two horses a horse-drawn press a wood-fired furnace and a small barn to keep the animals in with this much equipment it takes a pre-trip a few days before the demonstration to transport and set up the equipment during the demonstration I press the juice out of the cane and ball the juice into syrup the visitors love to see those animals working they do observe the cooking but the animals are the main attraction my wife Sherry is set up next to the demonstration selling our sorghum sorghum baked goods sort of barbecue sauce and honey we travel around to quite a few locations fairs theme parks and festivals there seems to be a big demand for these demonstrations these demonstrations help us to sell our sorghum and we have become well-known because of them [Music] our dad passed away December 22nd 2018 he and our mother got us started with this muddy pond sorghum I am very thankful for what they got us started in and my brothers and I will keep pushing forward [Music]

Channel: Muddy Pond Sorghum

Views: 16,879

Keywords: muddy pond, muddy pond sorghum mill, muddy pond sorghum, sorghum, sorghum making, pressing, tennessee, country, mill, mark guenther, guenther

Id: HvOMIqBjX4g

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 09 2019