Nature is gradually reclaiming her land, and 50 years of weathering is gradually erasing what was once Titus County's largest syrup mill that was hoped to improve area farmers' incomes. Making syrup from locally grown cane was once a common Northeast Texas agri-business, but as far as we have been able to determine, most Titus County farmers raised and made sugar cane syrup. Until the 1950's, someone in just about every community owned a small cane mill and cooking vats where he processed his neighbors' cane for a fee or a percentage of the output.
In 1957, the Mt. Pleasant-Titus County Chamber of Commerce's Agriculture Committee was searching for a way to provide area farmers another cash crop to grow for extra income. Their solution, which "looked good on paper," was to erect a sorghum syrup mill capable of processing a large volume of sorghum to make it possible for farmers to grow sorghum and have a ready-made market for it. The mill would process the sorghum into syrup, which could be sold to pay the mill's way and probably make a profit for the Chamber, while helping area farmers. It looked like a win-win opportunity. T. J. Blackburn Syrup Works of Jefferson, probably the best-known syrup mill in this area, had been in operation since 1927.
Sorghum syrup, sometimes mistakenly called molasses, is more properly called sweet sorghum syrup when not mixed with other sugars. Molasses is a by-product of sugar refining, but cane syrup is just cane juice that has been boiled to evaporate excess moisture and thicken it into syrup. Sorghum syrup was popular in the Southern United States in the first half of the 20th Century. It contains hard-to-find nutrients like iron, calcium and potassium. Before artificial vitamins were invented, doctors sometimes prescribed sorghum as a daily supplement for people low in these nutrients.
Sorghum cane is planted from seed, and has a 3-4 month growing season. The cane looks similar to very tall corn, except it has no ears and grows 6 to 12 feet tall. The stalk is 1" to 2" in diameter at the base. Instead of tassels at the top of the stalk, clusters of small round seeds about 1/16" in diameter grow at the top of the stalk.
Harvesting is labor-intensive. While the cane is still standing, a knife or thin bladed stick is run down the stalk to remove the leaves. Next, the seed head is removed and the stalk is cut off close to the ground. Seed heads can be saved to plant the next year's crop if they are stored in a cool, dry location and allowed to dry.
Sorghum cane production was a promising cash crop for both small and large farmers. Six acres of land could yield about 60 tons of stripped cane, which would produce about 360 gallons of juice, which cooked down to 30-60 gallons of sorghum syrup.
Sorghum syrup is produced in the same way as sugar cane syrup, but with sorghum cane. Sorghum is a clear, amber colored, and mild flavored syrup that retains all of its natural sugars and other nutrients. It tends to be thinner and has a slightly more sour taste than sugar cane.
Processing sweet sorghum is the most critical step of making high quality syrup. The syrup maker's knowledge and skill, as well as the equipment and manufacturing process, all influence the finished syrup's yield and quality. A "syrup master" oversees the syrup making from start to finish, assisted by several other cooks who constantly stir the syrup and skim impurities from its surface as it cooks.
To make syrup from raw cane, sorghum stalks are brought to the mill where they are squeezed between large pressure rollers to remove the juice. As the raw, pea-green juice runs from the pressure rollers, it is strained to remove large suspended matter like stalk fragments, and then runs into a juice container.
The juice is next pumped into settling tanks through a pipe or hose and passes through a finer strainer as it enters the tank. It is allowed to sit several hours before being drawn off for cooking.
After settling, the cane juice is boiled in large troughs to concentrate the sugar content by removing much of its moisture. The troughs are commonly made of copper or stainless steel, but we didn't see either in the local mill's troughs. It's possible the troughs had copper liners which were removed years ago.
The juice is boiled two to three hours at about 210 degrees Fahrenheit, and must be stirred, skimmed, and clarified the entire time. The cooks use a wooden spatula to occasionally move the boiling cane juice along the pan. During the first minutes of cooking, impurities rise to form a thick, dreggy foam on top of the juice. As the juice begins to bubble through the foam, the cook uses a fine wire sieve attached to a long handle, called a "skimmer," to remove dregs from the raw juice as it cooks. After the initial skimming, dregs are skimmed as they accumulate until cooking is finished. Seven to ten gallons of raw juice make one gallon of syrup after boiling. The new syrup is then drawn off and collected in large cooling containers before being packaged into gallon jugs or buckets for sale.
Even the syrup making by-products are useful. Waste skimmings, rich in protein and starch and some sugar, are often fed to help fatten hogs quickly and make their coats sleeker with shinier. The mashed pulp, called chaws or bagasse, can be used as winter feed for cattle, sheep, or goats by just piling it in a field to feed directly to the livestock. It has a lower feed value than whole sorghum silage, but makes excellent livestock roughage with proper supplementation.
Today's nutrition conscious homemakers are rediscovering sorghum syrup's versatility, finding there is hardly a food that sorghum won't improve. It is a nutritious flavoring, a seasoning ingredient, and can be substituted cup for cup for sugar in any recipe calling for sugar cane syrup, corn syrup, maple syrup, molasses, or honey. Sorghum syrup can be eaten over cereal, pancakes, waffles, biscuits, toast, French toast, cornbread, and baked goods like home-made bread. Sorghum can be used in a stir fry base or baked beans. It makes a good ice cream topping or can be used in ginger snaps or ginger bread. Good sorghum is wonderfully palatable if eaten "straight."
Sorghum syrup requires no special care. Although refrigeration doesn't hurt the syrup, it becomes thicker and harder to spread. Storing the syrup at room temperature keeps it ready to use. Sorghum syrup, like honey, is a natural sweetener and can crystallize. Putting it in a pan of warm water or the microwave restores it to a liquid.
H. L. Hess, one of Titus County's largest farmer-ranchers, chaired the Chamber's Agriculture Committee in 1957 and had operated a sugar cane syrup mill on his ranch for many years. Several farmers and businessmen pledged money to create a corporation to establish the syrup mill to process sorghum cane to be grown by local farmers. The East Texas Cane Growers and Processors Association (ETCGPA) was established. Its board of directors consisted of Winston O. Ward, J. O. Freeman, Sam Blankenship C. S. Young, Dan Manfull, C. E. Gaddis, and H. L. Hess. Winston Ward was elected president, J. O. Freeman, vice president, Sam Blankenship, treasurer, and Dan Manfull was elected as secretary. Traylor Russell was the corporation's attorney.
The ETCGPA located a sorghum mill in New Iberia, Louisiana, purchased it, and moved it to Titus County.
This wasn't your grandpa's back-yard syrup mill. Unlike small family-run sugar cane mills that were common around Titus County at the time, this mill was a large, commercial operation. It had two 30 inch crushers which could handle up to 1,500 acres of cane per year. Crushers in small family mills were often powered by a horse or mule that walked in a circle while attached to a rod connected to the rollers. The ETCGPA mill was powered by large electric motors connected by flat belts to a large flywheel attached to the mill.
Cane was weighed at the office as farmers brought it in from the farm. From there, farmers drove behind the mill and up a hill where the cane was removed from their truck or trailer onto a conveyor belt that led down into a large pit dug behind the mill. At the end of the first conveyor, the cane dropped into a second conveyor that lifted it into the mill. There were two sets of conveyors so two trucks could be unloaded at once.
Cane stalks dropped from the end of the long second conveyor right into the massive 30" crushers. There the rollers squeezed the stalks to remove the juice, which ran out the bottom of the crusher through a trough.
The flattened stalks came out the front of the rollers, where they hit another conveyor that carried them to a combination chopper/blower. The chopper cut the stalks into silage, and the blower blew the chopped silage into a large overhead rack. Trucks would back under the rack, where large doors were opened to drop the silage into the trucks to be returned to the farm and used as feed.
The raw juice was pumped into overhead storage tanks to await cooking. As it was needed, the juice was added to the cooking vats to be made into syrup. Where small family mills were often wood-fired, ETCGPA mill's three cooking vats were each heated by two large natural gas burners fed from a 4" gas line. The vats were massive. They were almost 30' long and 4' wide, divided into two sections that were each about 2' wide. The vats measured 16" deep at the shallow end. Using math calculations, if each vat was filled only half full to allow for stirring and skimming, it could cook off almost 600 gallons of cane juice at a time, or a total of 1,800 gallons per batch when all three vats were used. The 1,800 gallons of juice should produce approximately 150-300 gallons of finished syrup.
The ETCGPA planned to only plant around 800 acres the first season. They purchased 7,200 pounds of seed, which Glover's Feed Mill sold to local farmers. The ETCGPA built a special "header" machine to remove the cane heads while it stood in the field. They planned to harvest the cane with a silage cutter and haul the chopped cane to the mill in dump trucks, where it would be put into a hopper. A conveyer would then move it into the crusher. After crushing, the silage would be returned to farmers for use as livestock feed.
The mill was moved to Titus County and set up, but little else is known. Farmers began planting cane, but historical newspapers say almost nothing about the mill after 1957. One brief article announced it was ready to produce syrup in 1958, but oddly enough, no advertisements to sell the syrup produced appeared in the Daily Times. Therefore, we don't know how long the syrup mill operated, but don't think it was long. We have talked to people who think it was out of production in 1961.
We find it especially odd, since the mill was a Chamber of Commerce project, that there were no ads in the Mt. Pleasant Daily Times advertising syrup for sale. We would have thought that a good bit of the syrup produced would have been sold locally at retail, but this may not have been the case.
In general, the family farm's decline and a variety of inexpensive sweeteners that came to market caused sorghum syrup's popularity, and consequently growing sorghum cane to produce it, to decline in the 1960s and 1970s. Only a few die-hards still produce syrup. Finding people who know the secrets to making it well is becoming harder and harder since most of them are now quite old.
Please contact us if you know anything about the operation of the East Texas Cane Growers and Producers syrup mill, or know anyone who does. We would like to fill in details of several things that we could not determine about the mill and its operation.
