This cooler weather is beginning to make me think about fall. The article I am sharing this week is found in the “Timpson, Texas Area History 1800-2002. This article was written by Sutton Hairgrove. My mother’s father had a cane mill and made ribbon cane syrup for the community for many years. I loved hearing him talk about the process.

I, Sutton Hairgrove, am interviewing Ben Jodie Bowlin, He is seventy-seven years old today (February 19, 1988) and was between the ages of forty and fifty when making the syrup. Jodie Bowlin is my great-uncle.

Q. How was ribbon cane first grown?
A. First of all, you dig the cane up, and pile it up and cover it up with rich dirt. You would cover the cane up to keep it from freezing through the wintertime. During the spring, you would uncover it at the end of March and the beginning of April. You would then pull it out of the bed and find the richest and best soil to plant the cane. The cane will not grow on any type of bae land. You then break up the land and make up some furrows five feet apart. Drop the cane in it from end to end. Then the cane will begin to come up in about three weeks. You then keep the cane well cultivated and hoed until the last day of June. Cultivate the cane real shallow all of the month of June to keep from disturbing the roots.

Q. When can you start cutting and stripping the cane?
A. You first start cutting and stripping the cane at the end of October. You have to watch the weather because if frost hits the cane, it will ruin the taste of the syrup. If you hear frost coming in it is best to go ahead and cut it down. Now that we have it cut down, we begin to strip down. As you strip it, lay it in pile and cover it up each evening to keep the frost from falling on it. Now that it is stripped, if you have enough help, you will load it up on the wagon or truck and carry it to the mill.

Q. Now that we have it stripped and loaded onto the wagons, what did you do then?
A. We would then take it to the horse drawn mill. That was what we first had was the horse drawn mill. We would always cut the wood to cook our syrup with in February. When you cut wood in February it always seemed to burn better. We would then hook a horse to the mill, which would go round and round. When the horse went around it would start the grinding which would smash the stalk and the juice would come out. Then juice would come out of the mill, which would run into a fifty-gallon wooden barrel. It would then strain through a burlap sack before going into the fifty-gallon barrel. We had a one-inch galvanized pipe running into the evaporator with a faucet on the end of it which would allow how much juice you needed in a pan. Now we would fill the evaporator with three-fourths cane juice. We would then let the juice boil at least one hour and a half; then start skimming the foam off the juice and put it in a waste barrel. Then it will start boiling at the front end of the evaporator more so than it will at the back end of the evaporator. You would then let it boil for about another hour.

The juice would then start turning browner, and browner, and browner until it begins to turn into syrup. The bubbles would then start getting smaller and smaller as the syrup began to get thicker. We would then get a syrup dipper and dip it into where the syrup was boiling and let it drop back into the evaporator off the dipper. As the wind hits it, it will tell how thick the syrup is getting. If it drips slowly, this means it is ready to pull the plug. The syrup will drip slowly into the zinc tub that is covered with a new flannel cloth. The cloth then strained the syrup. In order to drain the syrup out of the tub, we had a faucet in the side of the bottom of the tub. As the syrup drained out, we would catch it in either a gallon or half-gallon buckets. Now we then put labels on the buckets labeled “Pure Ribbon Cane Syrup”.

Q.  Uncle Jodie, what do you think was the most important technique about making syrup?
A. I would say the most important thing was the art and cleanliness of knowing how and making the syrup. Not just anyone could make the syrup. You had to know exactly how long it would take to cook it and the stage the juice was to be in or else the syrup would turn back to syrup. I also had two brothers named Tad Bowlin and Scoot Bowlin that were also expert at making syrup. Tad and Scoot were a big help to me. We also had people come from far and near to watch and learn. Some of the school classes back then would come out to my house to watch.

Another Timpson syrup maker was John Lumas Bogue who produced approximately eight hundred gallons of syrup each year. He supplied one hundred gallons each year to Kristensen Store and other local merchants. He shipped by rail to Shreveport and West Texas. In 1917, he produced one thousand forty-five gallons of syrup.

Note: I have included an area map of the Timpson area as I will probably be doing several more articles from the Timpson Area History book. Also be sure to come by the museum to visit the current exhibit on some early history of the county and the 1885 Courthouse.  Hope to see you soon.