Timeless Bonds: Muddy Pond Sorghum Run

So last fall my parents and I were fortunate to be able to go to Muddy Pond near Monterey, Tennessee to see the Muddy Pond folks, the Guenther family, make some sorghum. We have some serious sorghum lovers in the family and Muddy Pond sorghum has been our favorite for years now. Dad has eaten a lot of different sorghum in his 82 years and he says it is the best that he has had. I reckon those are words that you can take to the bank!

Well, it was a couple hour drive but it was a beautiful day for a drive and we got to see some pretty scenery along the way. We even stopped at a rest area like we have never experienced before. We were almost headed back out on 40 West when we were goin’ 40 East before we had even gotten out of the car to “rest”! There were some beautiful old oak trees at the rest area and it was worth the confusion to be able to see them!

Mighty Oaks

Closer to Muddy Pond, some folks had some beautiful fields of corn that were ready to be harvested. We even saw a farm that had several elk on it.

Beautiful Corn

Elk Herd

Of course, we saw fields of sorghum. Some of those fields were already harvested, some were waitin’ to be harvested and others were partway in the process of bein’ harvested. All of them were beautiful.

We made it to the Muddy Pond sorghum mill where they had a gentleman with a horse that was workin’ a small mill that squeezed the juice out of the sorghum cane. The cane was fed into the mill by the man. As the horse walked around a circular path, it pulled an arm attached to the mill that turned it. The cane went in one side, the juice emptied into a container and the cane waste was spit out the other side.

Sorghum Mill

Sorghum Cane Waste

This gentleman told us that the small mill was really just to show folks how it used to be done. Now the Muddy Pond folks have a huge harvester to pull with their tractors that mills the cane as it is bein’ cut. The juice is sent into large tanks that are also pulled by the tractors. The cane waste is thrown out onto the field where it will break down into compost and add nourishment back into the soil.

Dad asked the gentleman if he knew how much this harvesting machine had cost. The gentleman answered that the Guenthers had made it themselves. I reckon these Muddy Pond folks must come from a long line of Appalachians. They knew what they needed and they used what they had to make it!

Now after the juice is collected, it is pumped into a holding tank. Here it is preheated so that the next day it can be boiled down into sorghum in a huge maze of evaporator pans. The steam rises along with the mouth-watering aroma of hot sorghum above the evaporator pans. I wish that I could’ve bottled the smell of that room! The pans are heated by steam from a wood-fired steam locomotive boiler. The gentleman workin’ the evaporator pan would occasionally skim off the foam as the sorghum boiled. He said that because the pan was so large and so shallow, it only took about 30 minutes to take the sorghum from preheated juice to hot sorghum.

Holding Tanks for the Milled Juice

Wood to Fire the Steam Engine

This gentleman said that the hot and dry weather had been great for the sorghum harvest. He said in a normal year, it takes 8-9 gallons of juice to produce a gallon of sorghum. This year, they were gettin’ one gallon of sorghum for about every six of juice. I guess the dry heat must have pre-evaporated the juice! This gent said that the family raises about 65 acres of sorghum cane and on sorghum cookin’ days they can make up to 500 gallons of sorghum.

Sorghum Juice Making Its Way

Down The Evaporating Pan

After the juice had made its way down the evaporator maze, the 200 plus degree hot sorghum was pumped through a coolin’ system where it would slowly flow down a series of shallow levels. During this cooling process, it would cool down to about 150 degrees. From the coolin’ system, it was pumped into a large container with a spigot. At this station, boxes of clean jars waited to be filled from the spigot with the beautiful amber-brown liquid.

Sorghum at the Cooling Station

Cooled Sorghum Being Bottled

The process has changed a bit over the years but thankfully the results are still the same, a delicious, thick syrup. That syrup can be used to make delicious treats like sorghum suckers, dried apple stack cakes, gingerbread, popcorn balls, taffy… Thinkin’ of those delicious treats can make your tongue slap your brain out in anticipation!