Story of Muddy Pond

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their time with us, teaching us about molasses, and talking to us about the difficulties of preserving their way of life in a modern, mobile world. Go! Go!

Go! on. Come on. There's a lot of education in this farm. We do a lot of it for education for school children. People bring school bosses out, a lot of children. Back on Saturdays, children out of school, they come around and watch this farm. It

used to be every time old farmers, they trained their children in the farm. learned all this stuff. the more the world is so much different, the more things are different. It's really interesting for a lot of... That's where education is for a lot of people. There's still some youngsters that got their interest in this farm. I've been a farmer all my life because I'm a farmer at heart. Get over here. Back, back, back. I've always enjoyed working with horses. I would take that over there. All right. I've always liked working. What I like about cane more than anything is

you don't need no chemicals. You need to spray it. We cultivate and hoe it by hand, control the weeds. And then we'd have to spray for insects or nothing else. So it's real, real clean, pure product. Put it on there. For sugar cane, you make sugar out of it. But I understand, and then the leftovers, that's the black strap molasses. They've got a strong taste to it. Now, what is this called? is sorghum cane. I never have raised my sugar cane. I used to raise it a lot in Alabama, and they still do, I guess, Louisiana and stuff. Look at how much juice I still got in it. Squeeze and out. Now, a lot of people think when there's a little frost comes, it'll hurt it. But as long as the frost is not heavy enough or these joints freeze, it'll break the tissues all down, and the air gets to it and then it gets sour.

But as long as these joints are staying together, when you cut it off, you have to dry it up. It's a little dry. It kind of fills it back and seals itself off. if we can get it first or second morning after the frost is, we can still get it. But when that starts getting sour, the sorghum making is finished. But as long as just the leaves are freezing a little, that don't hurt nothing. And therefore, a lot of people are afraid to say, oh, the frost is going to get it. But as long as just these, I remember in only 25 years, 26 years we've been here, this one time, it was the beginning of October, had a heavy frost. It was so hard frozen that the cow patties in the ground was frozen. And we lost all the cane. In a few days, our sorghum cooking was over with, because it got black in the pan. It starts smoking everything. You can't make it no more when it gets sour. So that's a good education there. was that time for us. We didn't know that before. The old people used to tell us, oh, when the frost hit, you quit. And well, we had a little frost. leaves froze a little bit, but that never hurt nothing.

So at that time, when it froze so hard, then we knew what to talk about. So that had never happened to us no more. Now, you still make it the old -fashioned way, and one of your sons is out here. What is he doing exactly? He's feeding the cane mill. It squeezes, it breaks all these tissues up and squeezes flat and runs that juice out of there. But we found out also that the sugar part is the hardest to get out. Therefore, it's very good to press it out real tight. Now about stripping. That's another thing. A lot of people think we have to strip all the cane and make good sorghum. That's not true. We've experienced it. We've tried it many ways. But we do know one thing. We run our juice into the tanks there and settle it for a few hours. That gets all that starch and stuff. It goes down, and then we have steam heat now. That's the reason we got into steam. It's a more even heat. That heat hits

that juice. It separates that grassy stuff. We run the juice in all the time. The end and the pen, it looks lower on that end because it's not boiling up so high. looks like the juice is running towards that end all the time. I'm scared we get it rolling right at seven. We get them off there in the end. That's what makes good sorghum. I put this wood fire for a long time. Every time your wood goes down, the heat goes down and the juice is settled. That gives the juice a chance to go back. The skimmings, they go back with an ulcer. Then you have to dip and stir there. That makes it by taste and stuff like that. I think the first time we came, and that's a lot of work putting the wood in there and getting it hot. Oh, it's a lot of work. You get smoked up and it's hot. Another thing, we can stand there and all the heat we get is just to steam off with the juice of cooking. We don't have the fire in there. We've got the fire in the boiler outside. But that works really good

and it makes a real good product. I feel very happy that we went that way. This is kind of a unique thing to share with different people. People don't see molasses. Like you say, they buy it in the grocery store and they don't understand the old ways of doing it. people don't know what it is after they buy it. They say molasses. Well, if it's got a good taste and they like it, they might buy more. If not, they say, no, I don't like molasses. But this is like a sorghum syrup. It's healthy. It's got a lot of iron in it. Some people say it'll make you fat, but it has never made me fat. I always lose the most weight in the sorghum time, because I run around lot under my feet, but I eat more sorghum in the sorghum time than I all year long. So now the syrup comes out of there and goes down into a tank down into your mill, right? this juice does, yeah. All the juice goes down that hose, goes into a tank and gets settled there. And then we regulate it inside and run it onto the pan. And that's where it's cooked down.

It looks like a big thing, but it comes all from simple cane juice. Is it going to be a good year for you? It's year. It's a year as we've had in ten years. I think it's the best year in ten years. Okay, what is the whistle for? To let off the steam? The whistle is more an entertainment, just a playing thing, really. Certain things we can whistle and give some signals with it. That did our time to usually blow it several times. A lot of people come around here and they have never heard of steam whistles, so the boys think it's really interesting to blow that whistle that we're known in. Which it is. There's a lot of children come by. boy has this good for them to pull that whistle and they just enjoy it. There's seven boys and one sister and I

think the third brother got the idea. wasn't thinking that steam would do real good for us. When we finally got started setting it up, then someone offered him bigger bucks and he went north, went to Michigan. I was the one that set it up and got it going. When we came the very first time, your dad had to put wood in, sort of like under the building and underneath it. I noticed it's lot cooler in there, too. Now we put the wood in the boiler out here and it causes steam. We operate somewhere from 80 to 90 pounds of pressure. The steam goes in a line under the pan and that's what makes it boil. You don't have to worry about it burning anymore? No, it won't scorch anymore. You can make it as thick as taffy if you want. You can't get it out of the jars so it gets that thick and it doesn't scorch anymore. Now we have a steam engine pump here. When the steam turns back to condensate, it goes back in this holding tank here. This steam engine, this is actually an old -time steam engine. It was patented, I don't know when it was made, but it was patented in 1893. You can see

how it's pumping there. It's pumping the water back and keeps the water in the boiler. We also have steam injectors. This and this right here is a steam injector. In the way these work, this hot steam comes down here into this pipe, into this pump and it draws cold water out of this barrel and overrides its own pressure and pumps water into it. makes a steam with water and overrides its own pressure. Now we have two pop -off valves on the boiler. One goes off at 109 pounds and the other at 130 to 35 pounds. That relieves the pressure in it when it gets so high. We have the state inspector. We have the state inspector who's here this morning, in fact, checks it. He comes every six months, checks it all over and makes sure we're safe. If anybody comes to visit you, you let them wander all over, Anywhere they want to go. They welcome to come, make themselves at home and have

a good time. Hold it up like that. See it get stringy. That's how we check it to get it thick enough. When it's finished, it runs out in its bucket here. What I'm doing is pumping it up in this trough here. What do you taste it? You have a taste of That cools it off. From there over to the barrel and stored in the barrel. Then it's filled in the

container. As you saw, the horses were squeezing it out up there and the juice comes down and stored in those tanks over there. It comes in on the pan. At that end of the pan, it just starts heating. The green is boiled out of it and it's called the skimmings. They come to the top. Those are the skimmings that are took off of the juice. As the juice continues to come, keeps coming this way, you can see how it turns lighter and lighter all the time. The bubbles get smaller and pop quicker. Then you can see how it strings like that. We can put it in a plate and check it to get it thick enough. It's somewhere between 230 to 236 degrees hot when it comes off there. We keep track of it, like how many gallons of juice we make a day. It's been as good as six and a half and it's been as bad as eleven this year.

Eleven to one and six and a half to one. In that range between there is usually what we get. It has been some years, it's been as bad as thirteen. It just depends a lot on the weather. Time to season you've had. Converting their molasses making process to steam is not the only change that has occurred at the Gunters. Other changes have also been made. Eddie no longer sits by as the cane is being crushed. It's now his job. Mark has moved from feeding the cane into the crusher to making the serpent side and he is married in the father of three. Perhaps the most notable change at the Gunters however is in daughter Judy. She is married now and a junior at Tennessee Tech. Judy the first time we came you said you wanted to be a nurse but you were still dressed in traditional clothing and we thought perhaps you would stay here. Well I guess things change. Time brings changes.

And so now you're attending college. Right. I'm a junior at Tennessee Tech. And you're studying to be an accountant of all things. Correct. You can help them with the molasses business here. Oh I'm sure I can. Yeah. I notice you are still here over today helping with the molasses making. Well I just came back from class. I have five classes total and so I help when I have time. Which is not too much. I do as much as I can but can't help every day. How can you retain some of your old ways and still accept the new? You take the good and you try to keep the good and try to adapt to the good of new ways. You just try to find a balance in both worlds. I think is the best way I could describe it. I don't know that we'll always be here. know we lived

after I got married we lived in Cookville for a while. We lived in Tech Village and that you know coming from a place like this you can understand how it would be hard to adapt to living in an apartment where there's someone above you and beside you. And I didn't adapt to that very well. We didn't live there very long. And after that we moved out here. But I'm not saying that we'll always be here. You know after I graduate we'll have to see what happens. My husband has ambitions too so depending where the road takes us just don't know. I'm sure he wouldn't be happy about us leaving. He's happy about having us be here. He likes to have all the family close by. The family kind of does work together as a unit still right? Oh yeah, yeah. Almost all of us live here around this area. There are a lot of things about the way that I grew up that will help me a lot in life. know that I could have never learned in any school or any other way.

was very educational and it'll help me through life. I know that. Now did you just attend the Amish school here? Did you go on and like go to a high school somewhere? No, I got my GED. It's how I got into college. But I only attended the parochial school up to the eighth grade. So you got your GED and got into college in an hour junior at Tennessee Tech. So you had to learn something all those years. Yeah, a lot of it I'm sure came harder to me than it would have to some other people. But after getting into college I could see how my education was not inferior to what the regular education is. Because I have a very good foundation in math and reading which is the public schools leave a lot to be desired in that area. John still has a problem accepting Judy's new lifestyle but he says he does see the need

for some change in the Mennonite life. Judy's changed considerably and I think one of the things that probably speaks very highly of you is that she's now a junior in college. Yeah, well, I don't know what to say about that. I guess it's different from what we're used to. Just doing some work was edifying. I wouldn't have it against it but usually become a city slicker or something different. I'm not too much for that. It's sort of hard for me to accept that. Well, I don't think she's going to become a city slicker. But you know the fact that with her education here that she got into college without ever attending a public school speaks highly and she said she did much better in math and reading than a lot of the other kids. Well, the children in our school, they get a pretty good education. We don't teach much foolishness and a lot of stuff is not really much sports and stuff like that. They got a real good, they learned the reading and writing and the

rest of the takings and things. They have some hair strands and things like that. The most necessary things but like lot of foolishness. We don't spend no time with our children and teach them that. the way there's no public schools now, there's a lot of things you know, it's it's for sports. It's a sports life instead of so. But you are, Mark looks like he's going to continue to stay on and make sorghum molasses. Yeah, I think so. Well Leonard and some other boys. Yeah, the boys like farming and they see, you know, we can get way too high in farming and we get into farming like he's a terrible big machinery and costs tremendously much money that you can't pay for your stuff, finally you get yourself in a trap. know, you can't enjoy it anymore. If you just work for debts, just continually working for debts and paying a big machinery off, there ain't no joy in that anymore.

And you know, there's a lot of people, I know people like to drive a big air -conditioned cabs and tractors and even have a television or radio in there and everything. But they'll have a city slicker life. They want to work eight hours and then go on. And I've never been used to it. I work long days and sweat and, you know, I don't usually work to torture myself, I enjoy working and, you know, if we work pretty steadily and we're involved in our things, doing something that's beneficial, keeps you out of mischievousness. I enjoy it and I believe it's really good for our country, the family, they stand together and work and, know, I believe God made people to work. And if nobody works anymore, this country goes under. Because we don't

believe in it, that God has to do it that way and we need to work. And that's different works to do, raise something to eat, that's very necessary too. John, when we first came, it probably was almost ten years ago, you really were a little bit more isolated than you are now. Is it hard to keep the outside world from coming in on to your way of life these days in America? I mean, you kind of have to mix, don't you? Yeah, I guess we have changed in some ways. First we removed here, because we were a lot more isolated, in the old, well, I guess the Regineers were in the old Amish ways, and didn't have no electricity, vehicles, but we realized soon that we were pretty far from town, and to go with horses and wagon on a freeway or on a highway was a lot of traffic, even on a two -way highway you can't pass, it's dangerous, it sets your life in danger. And I guess we finally got to the knowledge and understanding that

these outward things is not what saves us. We've got to use them in moderation, and for myself I feel like I've got to pick up truck now, and I don't feel like I misuse it and use it for necessity. And it's, like you say, it's hard to keep everything out in old ways. Now there's groups, some of the people used to live here, moved to Scottsville to talk, and there's a pretty isolated group over there, of course. advanced pretty much, they made big horse powers, they got some feed mills there, and the most sophisticated I've ever seen running all by horses, have a big horse gear, the horse go around, put about ten of them in there, and run a big feed mill, corn shellers and everything. So you have some of the old, but you've adapted to accept some of the new ones? Yeah, we adapted to some of new ones, yeah. And two of the boys, they went together and bought a tractor, but we used it more for hay bale

and power taker off stuff like that. To start with, the first years we hired people to bale our hay and this, when you start depending on other people, you do a lot of times in trouble. And I guess we felt that that can all be used in moderation, and in a careful way, I think the Lord, He's pleased with it, to use it the right way. We're not supposed to misuse this world, we're supposed to use it for a nice hesitate. That's as far as I want to go in that. I'm not out for having new and big fancy stuff, sometimes you have to buy new stuff to have good stuff, because old stuff wears out. But as the time has changed, things has changed. I remember an old friend telling me that, they thought when the two -row corn platter came out, the world must be surely about to end, getting so fancy and so sophisticated, they used to make their rows by hand and then drop that on by hand and cover it up. When a two -row corn platter came through the field, that was awful. Some people left for a hunt, and I

couldn't accept that right away. And I guess likewise, it was this way because of some of the things that we have just not accepted right away. But as time goes on, know, slowly you accept some things that you hadn't first. You have a lot of visitors here this time of year. Do you like having visitors? Yeah, I like to have visitors, yeah. I guess if I didn't like having visitors, I didn't find me something else to do. But there's people that say, well, they like people come around and buy their sorghum and stuff, but in my heart, I always like to see people and like to talk to them. I'm not a person who want to live for myself. I like to visit with people and share, because I think the good Lord, He made us all, not just me. The Gunther family makes molasses each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday during this time of year, and visitors are welcome to the Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill. And that's the Upper Cumberland Camera for tonight. We invite

you to join us next week at the same time for Studio 22. The Upper Cumberland Camera is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you. The

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