On the 12th day of Christmas…

January 5, 2019 / a samaritan woman / 2 Comments

When asking someone “how was your Christmas?” we often receive a reply along the lines of “it was lovely! And I’m so glad it’s over!” I heard that just this morning, and on this, the 12th day of Christmas, I was reminded of something I read recently on Twitter.

It was a retweet of something posted by @theodramatist: “What are some ways that we can start reclaiming/celebrating ALL 12 days of Christmastide?”

How can we keep the magic of Christmas?

Responses to this tweet included ideas old and new, and some great ones at that. While the Christmas theme continues in church until Epiphany, the secular world has mostly moved on. Retailers put Christmas stock on sale Dec. 26th, and – for the most part – wishes of “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” has become “Happy New Year!”

Christian churches do, of course, stick to the liturgical calendar. And while I understand that Christmas is a busy and exhausting time for staff, how about keepin’ it “high church” for a while if that fits your congregation? (Um, incense is optional.) I had a crazy idea of a midweek carol sing – a week after Christmas. (Why not? Everyone finally has time for it!)

A Nativity scene made from cypress knees on display at Epiphany Church, New Iberia (2018)

In recent years, my church has started doing the children’s Christmas pageant as an Epiphany pageant, which I think is a great idea. My own home decorations stay up until Epiphany. Here in the the sugar country of south Louisiana, families whose lives follow the calendar of grinding often find alternative dates to celebrate when grinding isn’t finished by Christmas (often the case).

But the feeling of relief that “Christmas is over until next year – WHEW!” is a little sad and bittersweet.

To be sure, Christmas IS a sad time for many, filled with bittersweet moments for nearly all of us. We are reminded of loved ones who are no longer with us; we are reminded of the changes in our lives and the lives of those around us. We look at the changes in the world, and (human nature being what it is), we focus on the things we lack and the things we miss while often glossing over the positive changes.

a handmade clay Nativity displayed at Epiphany last year

Even the wonderful things about the Christmas season (time with loved ones, community worship, giving) tend to overwhelm us, and I think it’s because we try to squeeze it all into such a short period of time!

Shouldn’t that be a good reason to remind ourselves that yes, there are twelve days of Christmastide, and we all pretty much get started celebrating Christmas during Advent anyway. So why all the stress?

Maybe it’s because we want to ignore the things that hurt us, the painful memories, and the wondering-what-next-year-will-hold. The sad irony is that the very gift of Christmas, the miracle of the Incarnation, should be the healing salve that tends the wounds of the less-than-Hallmark-perfect holiday – and so often we forget about that miracle.

One of the many Nativity scenes displayed at Epiphany church on our feast day

I’ll be packing up my Christmas decorations today and tomorrow, with the exception of the Nativity. (After all, the wise men don’t arrive until tomorrow, anyway.) As I do so, I’ll be revisiting the memories of Christmas past and be grateful for them. I’ll challenge myself to bring the beauty and miracle of the Incarnation into all of 2019. Tomorrow, I’ll watch our Epiphany Christmas Pageant, sing Christmas carols, and enjoy the first king cake of the season – and maybe find a plastic baby Jesus inside the cake.

I’m welcoming baby Jesus into my heart, and hope that you do, too.

Merry Christmas, and God bless us everyone.

Wheeeeeee!!!

April 30, 2017 / a samaritan woman / 1 Comment

Joy doesn’t have to be complicated. Or cerebral. Or…anything other than a feeling of “wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!”

So rather than expound, I’ll do something simple, like sharing some photos of a couple of joyful doggies, because we all need to smile about something silly. Isn’t that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

Here’s some joy for you: Taking the dogs riding in the sugar cane fields on spring evenings.

Life is full of simple joys.

Dogs have wisdom…they enjoy – and appreciate – the simple things. We can learn a lot from them….

Making Sugar (part 2)

December 17, 2016December 17, 2016 / a samaritan woman / 1 Comment

In Part 1, we got the cane from the field, unloaded it at the mill, chopped up, and now… into the mill it goes.

Cane is crushed before it even enters the mill.

The cane is pretty much pulverized along the way, and the juice extracted. In another part of the cane mill complex, a core laboratory is analyzing samples from each load of cane to determine sucrose, moisture and other factors which indicate the sugar yield from each truckload. The cane is pulverized through the mill – usually involving a series of rollers – and the juice is extracted. The remaining pulp is called bagasse, and is usually incinerated to fuel the running of the mill. There’s an awful lot of bagasse, though, and the sugar content means it will ferment quickly – there’s that stench a lot of people complain about.

Ground cane being processed

Ground cane being processed (more!)

The juice itself is like any other raw juice – a thin liquid, and frankly, not exactly clean. It’s cleaned up with slaked lime, and the dirt settles out and is usually returned to the fields. The juice heads off to evaporators so that it can be boiled down.

Bubble, bubble, boiling sweetness!

If by now you have the idea that a sugar cane factory is a large, hot place with a lot of very massive machinery…you’re right. Most of the “smoke” people see billowing out of the plant is steam, and both air and water exhaust is monitored and must meet environmental regulations.

Making sugar is an art as well as a science. It’s one thing to boil the juice down into syrup; it’s something else to coax it into crystalization. It’s a tricky process.

Checking crystals

Once the magic of crystalization happens, the syrup heads to centrifuges where the crystals are separated from the liquid. Voila! Raw sugar, which is dried and sent to a warehouse.

Taking a quick sample from a centrifuge.

Louisiana is home to 11 sugar factories which produce raw sugar, which is sent to refineries that will produce refined sugar and similar products. Because of the sugar content of the cane, it must be processed quickly after it is cut. The raw sugar is usually stored in warehouses until it can be shipped to a refinery.

Cane goes from the mill to a warehouse on a conveyor belt. It pours into a mountain of sugar.

At the warehouse, the sugar is transferred to dump trucks, which take it to barges, which will take the raw sugar to a refinery.

I often wonder who figured out that the tall, thick cane held this amazing sweet stuff in it. Since cane was introduced into Louisiana, I don’t think it was the same brave soul who looked at a crawfish and said “I wonder how that tastes?”

So when you sit down to enjoy something sweet this Christmas or Hanukkah, take a moment to think of all those who had a hand in your holiday baking. Chances are many of those folks are at work on Christmas day, because grinding doesn’t stop until all the cane is done. Think about all of those who’ve had a hand in your entire holiday meal, no matter how extravagant or simple, and say a prayer of thanksgiving.

Now I’m going to post this and bake some Christmas cookies with – yep, you guessed it – home-grown Louisiana raw sugar.

Making Sugar

December 6, 2016December 7, 2016 / a samaritan woman / 2 Comments

I live in the heart of sugar cane country. I am literally surrounded by cane fields. From my front porch, I have a view of oak trees and cane fields and in the summer, you can indeed hear it grow (the cane, that is). Our world has changed so much over the past decades that more and more people don’t quite realize exactly where their food comes from. Well, I can tell you a bit about sugar.

Right now it’s harvest time in south Louisiana. We actually have a relatively short growing season – cane is planted in the late summer of one year and harvested in the fall of the next. Most sugar consumed (sugar, not corn syrup or other sweeteners) comes from sugar cane (about 20% comes from sugar beets), which is actually a grass. A grass that can grow really, really tall.

Sugar cane in mid-summer. Tall, but still with some growing to do.

In some growing areas of the world where the cane has a longer season, it flowers. Wow! Not in south Louisiana as the cane must be harvested before it freezes. Harvest time, or “grinding,” starts around the beginning of September.

Harvested cane in carts await unloading at M. A. Patout sugar mill in Patoutville, LA.

Cane is cut, loaded into carts or large (18-wheeler) trucks, and brought to the mill. In years past, the cane would be burned after cutting and before loading in order to remove the leaves. Fortunately, newer harvesting techniques results in “billet” cane which is chopped shorter during the harvesting process – eliminating most (but not all) of the need for burning the cane. It may be a pretty sight, but it does put a lot of smoke and soot into the air.

Burning fields at dusk between Lydia and Patoutville, LA

Anyone driving on a two lane highway in south or central Louisiana knows to “watch out for the cane trucks!” because they do tend to move more slowly than regular traffic. A pet peeve of mine is the folks who zoom around them recklessly or who complain about the trucks. What, you’re late for work? You should know better this time of year, and the person driving the truck is at work already.

Sterling Sugars in Franklin, LA

Sugar mills are where the cane is crushed, juice is extracted, then boiled down to yield sugar crystals (and molasses). Sounds simple? Well…the idea is simple, but sugarmaking is as much of an art as it is a science. But first things first. Cut the cane, load it, haul it to the mill and unload it there.

A truck filled with cane arrives at Cajun Sugar Co-op, New Iberia, LA

Methods of unloading cane are pretty impressive.

At Cajun Sugar, the truck body is lifted to dump the cane.

Sometimes the entire truck is lifted!

At Sterling Sugars in Franklin, LA, it’s a similar process.

But wait…I’m getting out of order a bit. When the trucks arrive at the mill, they are weighed (they are weighed again after the cane is dumped). A “core sample” is taken at that time as well. Think giant hypodermic needle and you get the concept.

The core sampler at Cajun Sugar.

The sample goes directly to the core lab where it will be analyzed for sugar content. Samples are tracked by barcode, and the load-specific barcode is generated when the sample gets to the core lab. That info is tracked in the mill’s database so that each farmer can be paid properly. Pretty neat, huh? (I remember my grandfather at the mill, counting his truck arrivals – a common thing back then.)

Once the core sample is taken, the trucks are unloaded and the cane is stacked up in a massive yard. From there it is transported into the mill for grinding.

Not quite a “big ol’ rock candy mountain,” but a mountain of sugar cane.

The cane is chopped more before going into the mill.

Between the cane yard and the actual mill.

On the way into the mill, the cane will be on a conveyer belt and “make a pass” under some giant magnets. A stray piece of metal can mess up the mill, and possibly harm a mill employee.

Generally speaking, the cane will be chopped, smushed, macerated, and more or less rendered into mush/goo/yucky looking stuff and the juice extracted. Hence the term “grinding!”

But how does the juice from this overgrown grass become sugar? Ahh, that’s the next segment of this series, as I’m now going to have a cup of coffee sweetened with raw sugar. Stay tuned!