Uncle Frank's

Uncle Frank's

Sugar,Cane Syrup

Gourmet Food

(limited quantities) Buy now $20

In tribute to Uncle Frank and his syrup mill.

Syrup so thick you can put it on a biscuit with a knife.

Sugar cane syrup is not very popular any more.

A lot of people are moving in bringing their Maple syrup.

Also, many people no longer eat biscuits for breakfast, (it takes too long).

Pancake syrup is thin and corn syrup is cheaper,

but there is no substitute for sugar cane syrup.

(some sugar cane syrup is also thin)

Joe grew up eating biscuits and syrup for breakfast, you know, like grandma used to make.

So cane syrup has been a part of his diet all of his life.

Most of the syrup for sale is corn syrup.

A few years ago, the market where Joe did shop the most,

quit selling the brand of cane syrup

that he was accustom to buying.

He said at that time "I will grow my own."

At the time he was not sure at all that it would work out.

Doing some (a lot) of research on the internet,

he found that they had made advances in cane crop production.

It is not easy to get started growing cane when no one around is doing it.

He selected a variety that is very sweet and insect resistant,

and contacted the LSU Louisiana Experimental Station near Baton Rouge,

and told him that he wanted to grow cane in his backyard.

He arranged to pick up 25 stalks in Baton Rouge and got the cane planted the first year.

It did very well, but there was a problem with a way to get the juice out of the cane.

Some people are buying up old mills, but that would be an expensive way

to get the juice from only a few stalks of cane.

Joe enjoyed chewing the juice from a piece of the stalk, like he did when he was a kid.

The next year it was well established

and he came up with a way to extract the juice and learned to cook it down into syrup.

His dad liked thick syrup and Uncle Frank knew how to cook it.

Ray would pour some syrup on his plate, then use a knife to roll up a bit on the end,

then place it on a buttered biscuit. Joe's mother knew how to make biscuits.

You should try that with modern syrup. It is so thin that it is next to impossible.

Modern syrup is made to pour over pancakes.

They raised sugar cane down on the Southwest corner where the land was a little lower,

but still well drained.

Cane does not like standing water.

That cane did not grow like modern cane.

Ray planted cane fresh each year. He would save seed stalks by digging a small pit

and covering them with dirt to protect though the winter.

The next spring he would dig up the seed stalks and plant sections of the stalk.

Joints are used to raise new cane, not from seeds.

The cane grew tall and straight. Modern cane grows for several years without replanting,

and it tends to fall over and keep growing because of the weight of the stalk.

So the stalks grow crooked.

They had cane knives, kind of like machetes, used to strip the fodder (foliage) off of the cane

while still standing in the field.

Then they cut it all down close to the ground and packed it in the wagon,

with the tops all pointing in the same direction.

Uncle Frank had a syrup mill about a mile away.

A mule would walk in a circle around the mill,

and each stalk was fed into the mill to squeeze the juice.

A bucket was at the edge to catch the juice.

When the bucket was close to full, it was changed out and the juice was poured into a long pan

that had a fire underneath. It had pathways or baffles across it, kind of like a fish ladder,

so that the juice would flow from one side to the other while it was making its way to the end.

The cooking pan was about three feet wide and ten or twelve feet long,

and was started with water to keep from burning the pan.

It took several hours of cooking before the juice was ready to take off,

but after it was ready to take off, fresh juice could still be added on one end,

and syrup was taken off the other end.

The syrup was place in, of all things, a syrup bucket.

It was a gallon size tin bucket with a lid that press fitted.

It seems like they would make 20 or 30 bucket of syrup after Uncle Frank got a share for helping.

Ray probably furnished the wood for the fire.

Pure cane syrup is a thick, amber-colored syrup made from the juice extracted from the sugar cane plant.

No sugar is removed from the cane juice.

When raw cane juice squeezed from sugar cane stalks is boiled, liquids evaporate,

leaving a sweeter than molasses syrup.

Impurities float to the top and are continually skimmed off.

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