Sorghum, Sorghum, and More Sorghum!

One of the greatest things about living in the country is the sense of community. It seems almost ironic, considering that in the country you tend to live some distance from your neighbors as opposed to living in town. And yet, whether it be from attending the same church, working in the same workplace, or farming adjacent fields, country-folk all seem to know each other.

Nowhere is this togetherness and community more on display than at harvest festivals. Specifically, our Sorghum Festival.

For those who don’t know, sorghum is a plant that resembles a cross between bamboo and wheat. The stalks are thick and fleshy and a cluster of berry-type things grows from the top. The berries can be ground down into sorghum flour or just eaten right off the stalk. The stalk itself is the best part, though. When crushed and squeezed, it oozes out a light brown liquid that is gathered into a barrel and boiled down to make molasses.

So of course, since many hands makes light work, the locals built a whole festival around the processing of sorghum.

I naively thought that the kids might be bored by the whole thing but I couldn’t have been more wrong. They hurled themselves into helping strip the sorghum leaves off the stalks and prepping the stalks for crushing. Our littlest ones especially loved it. Hey, the job involved tearing stuff apart for a constructive purpose! What isn’t to love?

The older kids tired of the leaf removal process after only fifteen or twenty minutes, so they went to the pumpkin painting table instead and sucked on candy while painting scary faces. The younger ones stuck with the sorghum processing for a really long time, though. It’s been a while since I saw them so enthusiastic about anything! I think part of it was that they liked eating the sorghum berries as they worked. The berries are very crunchy right off the stalk, and they come in a fun little tassel that the kids liked carrying around. The only downside from the whole thing is that the stalks leave your hands pretty sticky. Sorghum is basically like a sugarcane, so everything inside the stalk has sugar in it.

We then wandered the booths for a while looking at all the homemade merchandise for sale. Every stall seemed to have candy available, and at one point the kids discovered a woman giving out free cotton candy. The kids were enthused. The adults? Less so. So sticky…

The local fire department got in on the act as well, parking their ladder truck in front of all the booths and raising the ladder almost to its maximum length of 108 feet. Then a fireman climbed the ladder all the way to the top to get a picture of the whole festival from above. I think that last part blew my kids’ minds.

We ended up spending almost three solid hours at the festival. Considering how many kids we have, and how easily they tend to get bored sometimes, this was a feat unto itself. They loved it. And to put the icing on the cake, we drove down to a local playground to let them burn off some sugar energy. A good end to a good day.