Autumn was in the air that afternoon in 1948 on a farm in Iowa when I saw my brother-in-law, Ray and a neighbor digging a hole in the ground and starting a fire in it. Indian Summer is one of my favorite times of the year and I love the smell of burning leaves and the bonfires that we had in those long ago days. Curiously I asked my sister what they were doing. She told me they were getting ready to cook sorghum to make molasses. Soon the air was filled with the fragrant aroma of burning wood. Ray poured a little kerosene on the fire to make it burn better. I regret that I didn't see the harvest of the sorghum and was only there to watch the end of the process, but I was fascinated and I've never forgotten it.

A large tray was set onto a long, low cooker and a small amount of dirt was put into the tray. The sorghum juice was poured into the cooker and placed on the burning pit. When the juice began to boil a stick was used to skim the hot juice so that the impurities were removed. If those impurities were allowed to remain in the juice, the taste would be bad.

As I watched with interest Ray asked if I would like to help and I was anxious to take my turn at skimming the hot liquid. The juice was bright green but as it boiled it darkened and turned brown. An aroma something like gingerbread drifted on the breeze as the sorghum cooked. Even though we took turns skimming it was a long afternoon. We stirred that sorghum for five hours and it was late in the evening when Ray said it was time to stop cooking it.

The finished syrup was filtered through clean muslin into lard tins and the molasses was transferred into glass jars while it was still warm.

That molasses was the best syrup I have ever eaten. When I grew older I tried to recapture the taste of homemade molasses by buying a jar of it in the grocery store but it was a sad disappointment. I never ate molasses again.

When I went to Iowa in February of this year I got to see Ray one last time before his death in April. I told him what an interesting experience making molasses was for me and how glad I was that I was lucky enough to get to take part in it. Ray let me use his treasured magazine, "The Small Farmer's Journal, featuring practical horse-farming" fall quarter of 1981 so I could learn more about making molasses.

Because of its high yield sorghum once was grown as a fodder crop and was called "depression hay." Sorghum prefers a lighter, sandier soil than corn and doesn't need heavy fertilization. Harvest time for sorghum comes just about the same time as an early frost. The canes are five to eight feet tall with seed heads at the top. Because they tend to clog the cane mill and cause a bad taste in the molasses the seed heads are removed and the leaves are stripped before they are cut.

The cane is run through a roller mill that consists of two or three iron cylinders arranged something like an old-fashioned clothes wringer. The power then was a horse or mule, which pulled an attached shaft around and around the mill. Now farmers sometimes hook mills to power units. Cane mills are no longer made in the United States and used ones are expensive.

From the mill the juice is filtered into a tub, then transferred to a cooker. Most old timers use a plain boiler pan, a large tray seven feet by two feet by six inches. There is also an evaporator method but many molasses makers claim that the open boiler makes better molasses.

It takes 49 gallons of juice to make seven gallons of molasses. Knowing when to stop cooking the syrup is the most important factor in determining the quality.

I'll never forget the sorghum molasses we made that autumn day or the taste of that syrup. Nothing could compare with that homemade molasses that we cooked so long ago. It was a once in-a-lifetime experience for me.