Ole Homewood

 Ole Homewood

Johnclarestokes 

My father first began growing and making sugar cane syrup in the mid seventies after acquiring from Wakulla County farmers the necessary implements,the old Golden Mill, the Columbus 60 gallon kettle and various straining tools, one being an old Chevy moon hubcap with holes drilled in it. When we lived in Sopchoppy in the fifties and sixties, we would annually attend the syrup cooking of Bert Rodenberry and Kenneth Strickland who taught my father how to properly cook the syrup, though he already knew much from his growing up on a farm.  He got a local brickmason Mr Dick Snyder,  to make his first chimney and kettle holder in what we called the sugar shack, a little cabin built around the kettle with a bath,kitchen and bedroom where we spent much of our time heated by the old wood stove. He called his syrup, Old Homewood, after the town in Scott County Mississippi where he was born and raised. I drew up some labels for the wild turkey and store bought bottles. With the help of the trusty Gravely tractor rigged on the cross beam to stay locked in a turning direction, it was up to the children and grandchildren and various relatives and friends to feed the stalks of cane into the mill, remembering sometimes not to duck each time the pole came around, giving all a laugh at their expense. It was our annual tradition at Thanksgiving to cook down the cane juice in the 60 gallon kettle to about ten gallons of syrup, the process usually finishing around noon where mamma and the girls usually had the tables under the trees ready for wonderful eating. It was always a tense and sometimes testy moment just before the kerosene fire from the rabbit box burner was turned off and the boiling came to an end. Too long and the syrup would be full of black flecks or dregs, too soon and it would not have the right consistency. Knowing when to dip the syrup out at the precise specific gravity from the hydrometer, usually around 16 we used to measure the syrup, or when the syrup candied when spilling off the dipper was  often a hit and miss experiment. I still have several bottles of Old Homewood and tell myself, someday I will set up the Golden mill, which I recently did in the back yard after my father passed away in March of 2011, leaving it all to me, but it is looking more and more like this tradition may have died when my father did in Williston. I hope not.