Cane Boil and Fiddle Fest

Today we went to Gainesville to a Cane boil and fiddlefest. It was held at a historic farm area at a nature center there. What is a Cane boil? It is the process where they harvest sugar cane, shown growing here and turn it into cane syrup.

The stalks are cut, the leaves stripped off of them and the stalks are run through a cane press to squeeze the sap out of them. The sap is boiled in a big cane kettle that is heated with a wood fire. He is boiling about 50 gallons of of sap here and it will make about 6 or 7 gallons of cane syrup. They were serving home made biscuits (baked in a wood fired cook stove) with the syrup on them. Tasty!

What is a fiddle fest? Around the grounds were several small groups of musicians playing bluegrass type music. We wandered around for awhile listening to them.

There were also demonstrations of spinning and weaving.

Reed and Liam would have enjoyed the blacksmith shop with its operating forge.

Janice enjoying some music.

There is a cane press and a cane kettle here on the property where we are parked that is no longer in use, I will try to get some pictures of them because I didn't get a picture of the press today.

Monday we will be driving down to Lakeland, FL, about 3 hours from here to get the windshield in the motorhome replaced. It developed a large crack from bottom to top while we were in Georgia. They will replace it Tuesday and we will return on Wednesday hopefully. I have been enjoying the "work" here, operating a backhoe clearing several acres of brush and trees.