Rooster ~ ABC Wednesday

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The Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 3 ~ Transportation

A hayride shuttle transported attendees between downtown and the train depot, 

the two areas of the festival.

Transporting approximately 24 passengers per shuttle, 

you could expect to wait in line approximately 10 minutes behind 300 other people to catch a ride.  

Pretty slick for a bunch of country dudes.

Classic cars

Classic pickups

Classic tractors

There was even a classy Belgian horse who would pull you and your sweetie in a carriage

through the historic area of town for a couple bucks.

The Syrup Festival ~ Vol. 2 ~ Making Ribbon Cane Syrup

For those of you who read my blog yesterday you know that I went to the Heritage Syrup Festival on Saturday and declared it one of the best small-town festivals I've ever attended.  The making of syrup was a traditional task of country folk in the Southern United States where sugar cane grows profusely.  Ribbon cane is simply a variety of this woody plant which looks similar to bamboo.  Sugar cane was brought to the Western Hemisphere by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World.  Below is a brief lesson on how the old-timers made syrup as was demonstrated at the festival.

Entering the syrup-making area.

 

First the cane must be fed into a crusher to extract the juice, which is extremely high in fructose.

This crusher had four ports into which the stalks could be fed.
If you look closely you can see the spout which feeds the juice into the barrel.
They probably used some type of metal container to hold the juice in the good old days.

You must remember that at one time there were no gasoline or electrically powered motors, 

so the energy to run the crusher was powered by mules.

The mule walks around the crusher in a circular track.

This guy's relief was waiting in the background.

The mule driver made sure that all the attachments between animal and machine stayed connected

and to give the mule a tap on the hind quarters if he decided to get lazy.

I think his job was probably the easiest.

A wood-burning furnace must get super hot to cook the juice.

The juice is cooked in a long baffled pan, often 12 feet in length, 

with the baffles allowing the syrup to transition from one stage to the next

and being skimmed during its final journey to the bucket, the can, or the bottle.

In the days to come there will be a series of posts consisting of "There was (fill in the blank)" of all the fun things that were offered at the syrup festival.  I'll try to keep the narrative to a minimum and I hope you have as much fun as I did.

Faces at the Syrup Festival

Today I went to the Heritage Syrup Festival in Henderson, Texas, about 30 miles west of my home.  It was the most fun I've ever had at a small-town festival, although Henderson was transformed from a small town into a huge city today with the number of people who attended from all over the state.  The Syrup Festival celebrates and re-creates the making of ribbon cane syrup which traditionally took place this time of the year in East Texas.  I took tons of pictures and will bore you with them in the coming days but for now here are some of the faces I encountered.

 

A wood carver selling his crafts

A clown who spotted an old friend in the crowd

 

One of the beautiful horses who are members of the Rusk County Sheriff's Department mounted patrol

A young man who could give you a flu shot while you waited in line for the hayride shuttle

A pretty lady in period costume

The mule driver for the syrup mill

Gladewater Mural

This quaint mural can be found along a quarter-block area in Gladewater, a small East Texas town about 75 miles northwest of where I live.  Gladewater is one of the few small towns in Texas that has actually seen an increase in its population in the past 20 years.  Somewhere along the way the powers that be obviously decided to pave over a red brick street and now they're being punished for that decision.  The roadway is rough and chipping but perhaps in a few years more of that beautiful red brick will resurface and they can chip off that ugly old asphalt and gravel composition road covering.

Girlfriends

Rain!

I left home about 3 p.m. yesterday to head into Nacogdoches for some errands and to attend the monthly photography club meeting.  Shortly after leaving home the sky just opened up and started dumping rain - in buckets!  Before it was said and done we received 2.7 inches!  Now, the burn ban is still in effect and this doesn't mean that our drought is over, but it is the largest single rainfall we've experienced in this part of the state in over a year, so we are hopeful!  I had a few minutes to walk around downtown Nacogdoches (the oldest town in Texas) before our meting started and I loved the reflection of the water on the brick streets.  I have little experience in taking nighttime photos and I think this was just a fluke!  At least it made me want to try again!

Q is for Quack, Quack ~ ABC Wednesday

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The Scenic Route

I hope you don't become disenchanted with my postings of autumn leaves.  Just blame it on the fact that I lived in the deserts of Arizona for the past 30 years and all this color is somewhat new to me and I'm rather fascinated by it.  Today's pictures are a sampling of what I saw as I drove down one of our country roads.

Another Trade Days Weekend ~ Vol. 2

Some more results of my day of people-watching at First Monday Trade Days in Canton this weekend.

The chicken lady.  This happy gal was the owner of the chicken featured in yesterday's post.

The chicken guy.  Another poultry vendor.

Adults wearing outrageous headgear.

I think they should institute a ridiculous hat-wearing contest.

There would be many contestants.

Some kids having fun.

Some kids not.

And now for my favorite photo of the day.

After balancing two kids and three suitcases on top of a stroller load of purchases
and buying a lemonade to placate the girls,
this shopper's cell phone started ringing, and she had to begin

rearranging all her items to find it!

I didn't have the opportunity to stick around to see how the departure went.

I hope the little girls and the suitcases didn't go toppling over.

Another Trade Days Weekend

My ramblings this weekend took me on a return trip to Canton for the monthly Trade Days event, which some call the nation's largest flea market and my favorite people-watching venue.  Here's some of what I saw.

Shoppers grabbing up holiday decorations

Renewing acquaintances

 

Boots galore (it was a chilly morning)

Some shy llamas

and lots of beautifully colored chickens.

Come back tomorrow for Volume 2 and my favorite photo of the weekend.  See you then!

Out With the Old

Being a grandma myself but living with a 90-year-old parent out in the middle of nowhere on a farm, I can use all the help I can get.  Even though we don't really have a working farm anymore (our pastures are leased to a neighboring cattleman) we still have a lot of chores around here.  Recently after having pruned some rose bushes which were practically as tall as the house, I piled up a load of cuttings into our trusty red wagon to haul them down to a spot near the barn where we keep accumulating piles of limbs, brush, leaves, cuttings, grass until such time as our burn ban is lifted so we can dispose of this stuff like good country folk are supposed to do.  I went through the gate, fastened it back to keep any wayward cows from escaping and headed off down the hill.  After about 25 yards I realized the load I was pulling just felt different for some reason.  Looking back over my shoulder I saw the old wagon sitting back near the gate, and that made me wonder, well, what the heck had I been pulling and dodging through all those cow patties.  That's when I discovered that all that was in my hand was the handle and the front axle!  The bolts holding those two pieces on had rusted through the bed of the wagon! 

The next few days were spent looking for a new vehicle!  I checked on line and these little red wagons that we all grew up with as children ranged in price from about $75 to over $100!  And this was just for an ordinary one, not one of the fancy ones with siderails or anything like that.  I finally found the best price at a hardware store about 20 miles away.  I wound up making three trips to pick it up, because it wasn't in stock, then the salesman discovered he had ordered the wrong one, and then of course we discovered the price I had been quoted was wrong.  The manager agreed that they should give me the wagon for the lower price I had been quoted, especially since I had made three trips to pick it up and probably used a tank of gas going back and forth so many times.  Of course nothing comes assembled anymore but the salesman assured me it was quite easy (obviously, he's never seen me wrestling with a screwdriver) but did warn me that placing the little covers over the wheel spokes was the most difficult of the tasks.  Well, after two hours of assembling the axles and the handle and taking it apart and redoing it because I had put it on backward the first time around and making sure all the bolts had nuts (of course I dropped a washer through the slats of the front porch and it quickly disappeared into whatever lurks under the house but luckily I found a suitable replacement in the junk drawer), then it was time to deal with those spoke covers (if that's not the proper terminology, just pretend you understand what I'm talking about).  As it turned out that was the easiest part of all, so now we have a brand-new (albeit very expensive) red wagon that I put together myself!

Granted, it doesn't have the character of the old one, but it's quickly developing a few dents and scrapes and scratches every day and I'm convinced it soon will look like an old, trusted farmhand.

Speakeasy

While vacationing in Flagstaff, Arizona, this summer I found this group of characters painted on an alley wall while rambling around the old downtown.  I thought it was so apropos that that a business with the name of Speakeasy had its entrance in a back alley.

P is for Powder Box Church ~ ABC Wednesday

In the late 1930s the Methodists in Jerome, Arizona, would not allow Mexicans to worship at their church, so in 1939 Sabino Gonzales decided to build a church for his people.  With stucco, wire mesh, and discarded wooden boxes of blasting powder, Gonzales and the members of his congregation built the aptly named Powder Box Church and it opened for services in 1941.  Jerome, once the site of a busy copper mine,  eventually became a ghost town but then in the 1980s and 1990s enjoyed a rebirth and the church building is now a private residence in this small but thriving community.

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