Video
Check when the next amazing Annual Midwest Old Threshers Reunion will take place.
Sorghum was introduced to the American colonies in the early 1600s by African slaves from the Gulf of Guinea, but the wild plant had its origins before the Christian era. Sweet sorghum has been widely cultivated in the U.S. since the 1850s for use as a sweetener. Sweet sorghum syrup tastes like a lighter version of molasses.
The Maasdam family of Maasdam Sorghum Mills in Lynnville, Iowa demonstrated making sorgham via a horse-powered mill at the Old Threshers Reunion. Stalks of sorghum grow like corn, but are about 10-15 feet in height. It is harvested in September by first removing the leaves and then cutting the stalks. The stalks are then milled and the green juice of the stalks is strained and cooked down into a thick brown sweet syrup.
The stalks are then milled and the green juice of the stalks are strained and cooked down into a thick brown sweet syrup.
. . . . .
Sorghum festivals in the U.S.
- Morgan County Sorghum Festival, West Liberty, Kentucky
- Sorghum Festival, Blairsville, Georgia
- Sorghum Festival, Crawford County, Indiana
- Hancock County Sorghum Festival, Hawesville, Kentucky
- Tipton-Haynes Bluegrass and Sorghum Festival, Johnson City, Tennessee
- Syrup Sopping, Loachapoka, Alabama
- Old School Sorghum Festival, McDaniels Crossroads, North Carolina
- Scott County Sorghum Festival, Oneida, Tennessee
- Sorghum Festival, Wewoka, Oklahoma
Grain Mill (Dried corn to corn meal flour)
Hand-turn Grain Mill (Dried corn to corn meal flour – view from above)
Grain Mill (Dried corn to corn meal flour)
–Early 1900s grain mills at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mt Pleasant, Iowa, 2009, above–
Historic crushing and grinding of grains may get you wondering if you should duplicate this process to serve baked goods and cereals with more nutrients. Search online for grain mills. Modern equivalents to these grain mills range from small hand-crank home-kitchen mills to commercial grade mills. Here is a comprehensive site: Pleasant Hill Grain.
One of the grain mills was described as being able to also grind coffee beans. Do you have a coffee mill grinder at home? I’m not sure if this use will harm the coffee grinder in the long run, but when I realized I have a mill already, I ran to the bucket of fresh wheat that was taken off the plant stock not 5 hours before, and ran them through the little electric coffee mill that I bought at Borders store. What do you know — it produced a flour!
This wheat, above, is part of the batch that was threshed and ended up in my coffee grinder hours later. The next video is the people threshing the wheat that ended up in my coffee grinder…
Video: Noisy steam-powered threshing machine
Visit St Clair County Farm Museum in Michigan during their “Old Fashion Harvest Days” for a demonstration of a steam-powered threshing machine.
Wheat can also be harvested by hand and threshed by hand.
Sonya Welter instructs us on how to thresh wheat by hand: “Gather the stalks into bundles and thresh by beating, shaking or stepping on it. Winnow to separate the wheat from the chaff, and store the whole wheat berries in a cool, dark place. Process into flour or bulgur as needed.” Here is a link to a 1947 method of threshing wheat from Gambatesa, Italy.
Visit a Mill Museum
A list of old mills is available
at the Historic Mills page.
Corn Sheller – Red Wooden Case
Corn Shelling
Corn Sheller
Above are some antique corn shellers that were at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mt Pleasant, Iowa, 2009. Manual corn shellers were improved enough to work smoothly by the 1870s. See the a picture of a corn sheller from 1870.
The early shellers required manual feeding of the cobs of corn; later, and now, they automatically feed into the corn sheller by a conveyor.
Check out our investigation on how to make corn flakes and other cereal.
