Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510310009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MOUNTAIN LAKE LENGTH: Long
Bob Porterfield's up and out early on his Giles County farm. In his garden, the cane stalks stand tall, topped with seed clusters turned a dark reddish hue. That's the signal for molasses-making time.
Porterfield and his wife, Dana, are in for a full day, one with a sweet conclusion to justify their toil. It's all about getting down to the essence.
The process of squeezing cane and boiling sap down to make molasses is about as old as the Southern hills. Some call it a lost art, like so many life-sustaining, labor-intensive tasks that folks have abandoned so readily in the name of convenience.
True, the Porterfields could buy jars of molasses in the store and save themselves the trouble. Bob might have used his two-week vacation to go fishing, as others do.
But Bob Porterfield says he's never had a vacation in his life, because you can't just walk away and put your farm chores on hold.
And that store-bought molasses, well, he says it looks like tar and probably tastes about the same. If you value the real thing, you do it yourself - or do without.
In the old days, honey and molasses were all the sweeteners country people could get. So they made them out of necessity and stuck by them, even after they could buy processed sugar.
Your modern dietician will tell you that molasses is a whole lot better for you, with vitamins and minerals that will keep both mind and body crisp as a fall day - another case of science confirming long-held folk wisdom.
Porterfield has learned to straddle the old and new. He works as a machinist in Blacksburg but lives on the family farm, off the road that winds up to Mountain Lake.
There's still the spirit of self-sufficiency about the place. The Porterfields have a large garden, some livestock, beehives, an orchard, grapevines and a dark, cool cellar filled with a mason jar cornucopia of preserved goodies.
However, as a natural-born, left-handed tinkerer, Bob Porterfield's never hesitant to investigate ways to have machines nudge the natural processes along. The molasses he's making on this day will be the real thing, but the traditional method of making it contains some streamlined elements.
For example: As the old people did, the Porterfields strip or ``blade'' the cane stalks' leaves, then use a handmade scythe to cut them down. They shear off the seed pods and save them for next year, then hand-feed the stalks into a mechanical squeezer.
Where once there was a horse or mule plodding an endless circle, harnessed to a beam that turned the mill, Porterfield has rigged a chain-driven electric engine. He says it's faster and you don't have to remember to duck, as you did every time the beam rotated.
Cane grows between the margins of frosty weather. You plant it in early May, as the dogwood blossoms fade, then harvest it when the leaves go gaudy.
Ground between the mill's cylinders, the stalks bleed green sap that runs into a pail. The crushed, limp stalks are thrown into a pile, then used for silage. As usual, there's very little waste in this homespun process.
Porterfield pours the juice into his next innovation, a 50-gallon flat tub heated by propane burners. The old-fashioned method of heating the pan was a wood fire, and keeping the heat consistent was a tricky business.
The big white propane jugs in Porterfield's shed that feed the burners look a lot more space-age and provide considerably less hassle during the most time-consuming part of the process.
Waiting for the sap to cook down used to be a time when the country people socialized. There's not much else to do during the eight hours or so it takes.
Porterfield stands sentinel beside the steaming vat, alone. Green goo collects on the rolling surface of the liquid as it cooks; he scoops it off every minute or so with a baking pan attached to a long stick; the pan is punched with small holes to make a sieve.
The pot liquor drains back into the pan, and Porterfield pours the skimmed foam into a bucket. Later he'll apply the dross to his garden as fertilizer. "I don't think it makes the next crop any greener," he quips.
He skims and pours, skims and pours, throughout the day, until the liquid begins to thicken and turns from jungle green to caramel brown. "You just got to keep doing it," he says, as he hasn't invented a way to do it mechanically - yet.
With plenty of time for reflection, Porterfield recalls making molasses as a child. "My parents used to make it and I just followed on up. We didn't make it every year, just every couple or three years. We used to use a horse and the old furnace."
Amid the responsibilities of his farm, family and day job, Porterfield let the molasses-making slide for 10 years or so. But he never forgot the taste.
So, in the past couple of years, he has assembled his assembly line, built a motor for the grinding mill and invented the cooking pan. The design produces good old-time sorghum but allows fewer people to be involved in the process, because molasses-making isn't the community event it used to be.
After eight hours, the molasses is ready. The Porterfields pour it into a large bucket, let the liquid cool, then open a faucet and drain the syrup into jars.
With the viscosity and color of lubricating oil, it slides over the tongue with a strong and darkly sweet flavor.
"Myself, I prefer hot biscuits and butter. That's the way I eat it," Porterfield says. "A lot of other people put it in baked beans. It makes good cake. And cookies."
They aim to make about 50 gallons from this year's batch. Some they've sold, mostly they've given away in jars as gifts. "There's not a whole lot of profit. It's just something I like to do," Porterfield says. "There's a lot of work in this stuff."
by CNB