• 2 Comments • Post a Comment • Permanent Link

   Yesterday I showed how the cane gets in from the fields. Someone asked me for a picture of the actual sugar cane itself. Here is the cane that is growing across the street from my home. This year it looks pretty good, it is about 12 to14 feet high, which is good.

    Here is a somewhat closer shot. You can see the joints, or notches, a little better. Word is the more joints a stalk has the better the quality.  Cane is planted by cutting the stalks down first and processing them with heat.  Then each stalk is bought backed to the field and  layed down inside the row one after the other end to end. This process is still done by hand. A machine drops the stalks on the ground but  someone picks it up and puts into the opened  dirt row. Another machine passes over and  covers the row. If a stalk of cane has 10 joints, or notches, then 10 new stalks of cane will come up.

    Once the cane is picked up from the fields it is then weighed in on the tractors or trucks. The closer cane is brought in by tractors and the cane that is farther away from the mill is trucked in. We get cane from over the state here at Leighton. We have two scale houses,(which you can't see behind the truck),  this is actually the one that I worked in for years. The truck weighs in full, dumps his load, then weighs out empty. The difference is subtracted and that is how many tons were bought in. Most truck drivers are paid either by the number of loads they bring in each week or the number of tons. It actually depends on which farmer the driver is hauling for.

     Each truck  then drives around to the core sampler. This is a large drill type machine that drills down into the cane while it is still  on the truck, to take a sample of the cane's content.  The sweeter the cane the more money the farmer gets. The reason each truck is sampled is because even though cane grows in the same area in the same soil, for some reason it may have different qualities. Some farmers try to get their cane out of the fields when it is muddy and therefore lots of mud is weighed in. This will cut back on the sweetness of the cane that is taken by the sampler. Bottom line, the greedy farmer is only hurting himself, lol.

           From there the cane is then dumped into what is called the bull pen. Not sure why it is called that, that is just what they say.  Here is the truck being unloaded with a hook. A man is stationed above the trucks and hooks on to each compartment and lifts it up and over the wall.

       Here is the bull pen somewhat full of what is called chop chop cane. They have a large machine that chops the stalks up while it is cutting them in the fields. This is a great way of stopping the mud from getting into the trucks and lowering the value. This machine is very expensive tho and only a few farmers can actually  afford it. For this reason  the mill still takes both types of cane in.

     You can see a large grabber think hanging from the top, it comes down grabs a great bit of cane and swings it over to the mill.

      At this point the cane then goes into the mill and is ground cooked and spun.  The spinning is what makes the sugar. After it is cooked it is put into the spinner, this drys the sugar by taking out the molasses. Brown sugar, or raw sugar, still contains molasses. The more it spins the whiter it gets. We do not make white sugar here, only raw sugar, that is done in another factory.

  Well that concludes part two of the "plantation" tour. Be sure to stop by tomorrow for the final chapter of "where did that sugar come from?" LOL

Thanks for visiting today...........Kitty

• 3 Comments • Post a Comment • Permanent Link

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Plantation Tour --part 1

Posted in Homestead Happenings

   It's that time of year here on the plantation. The grinding season has started. My dh hates it, I really can't blame him though, he works 12 to 16 hour days, 7 days a weeks, for up to 4 months. This year, the word is it will last untill the middle or late end of January. That is really the longest season yet. It has to due with the fact that sugar mills all over the state are shutting down so we are getting more and more cane coming here. Also repairs have to be done each year and that can run into the millions (which some mills just don't have)  and not to mention to the fact  that cane fields are being cleared for mini malls and Wal-marts, which is something I really hate to see.

   Anyway I thought I would show some pictues of what goes on around my home.  To show just how close I am to the action I took this first picture from my front porch swing.

 

The next few pictues are of them cutting the cane and it being picked up to bring right down the road, literally about 100 yards, to the mill.

This machine is what cuts the cane down. It really looks like something from a space movie. It has two big cork screw arm-things in the front that rotate inward to push  the row of cane between the blades to be cut. The cane then comes out from underneath the machine in a nice neat line.

Here comes the tractors.

Another machine, called a grabber, picks up the stalks and places them into the wagons.

Waiting for his turn.

 

I will post the next set of pictues  tomorrow, I hope ( I think something is wrong with my camera and I will just fall on the floor if so lol). It is really a neat process to watch.  I have lived here 16 years and have never gone into the mill to see the actual cooking process. I would love for my husband to take me through it, but he's always working. So I can show all the outside process and the finished product.

Well that concludes the tour for the day, be sure and return later of part two, of "Where did that sugar come from" LOL.

Thanks for stopping by................Kitty

• 5 Comments • Post a Comment • Permanent Link