The Time Capsule: Raising cane – a sweet proposition
It’s been four or five years since I checked in with Marge Kramer at Maasdam’s Sorghum, so I gave her a call to see how the 2014 crop turned out. A little older and maybe wiser, Marge is not raising cane the way she once did. She’s slowed down a bit, and the past year wasn’t the best for the sorghum crop. She tells me a hot, dry summer—especially August—is good for cane and this year was anything but. Even without a bad break from the weather, business isn’t what it used to be.
“As the older generation dwindles in number,” Marge said, “we lose customers. Young people have no idea what sweet sorghum is. They even confuse it with molasses.”
This is a travesty. Molasses is a by-product, a left-over residue when mass-produced white, granulated sugar is refined. There’s little food value in molasses. Sorghum, made from sweet cane that grows 12-14 feet tall, is full of nutrients and rich with history. Sweet cane is the crop our ancestors raised to make their own pure syrup. There were mills here and there throughout the area—including one between Villisca and Stanton—that ran for days on end during the early autumn. Local farmers brought their cane to be pressed, then boiled down to a thick, golden syrup that was sweet as honey. It was used on pancakes, in bread and cookies and other recipes. Sweet sorghum is syrup with a twang, a distinct taste from the past that lingers on the palate. I especially like it in barbecue sauce and as a glaze for either pork or beef ribs.
Maasdam’s, located near Lynnville in central Iowa, has been making sorghum since the 1920s. Their operation, if it was in Tennessee or Kentucky or most anywhere in the Ozarks, might well be a profitable tourist attraction. The family could wear bib overalls and straw hats and sell jugs of sweet sorghum to people who have no idea what the stuff actually is. Their farm is in Iowa, though, away from the interstate in an area lacking tourists looking for a reminder of yesterday, so Maasdam’s ships their nectar elsewhere.
Marge Kramer’s father managed the business for years, taking over at a time when the sweet juice was extracted by a horse-driven press. In 1944 he bought a 50-year-old steam engine—a machine that is still in use.
When I spoke with Marge a few years ago they were raising about 100 acres of cane and cranking out well over 10,000 gallons a year. Now the crop is down to 60 acres; the output closer to 7,000 gallons.
A good share of what they sell goes to Arkansas and Missouri and a retailer in Wisconsin. Other labels are attached and the sorghum is sold at apple orchards and roadside stands. Those who go to the Ozarks and buy from someone selling out of the back of a pickup truck may be getting cane syrup that was produced by Maasdam’s. There are not many wholesale suppliers left.
Our local groceries carry it, but given the high price of corn and the fading market for sweet cane sorghum, I don’t know how much longer it’ll be available.
Molasses, sold by some firm from New Jersey, is a poor alternative. I’ve put away a few jars of the good stuff, and next year plan to raise a little cane myself.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.