For four years running our congregation has hosted a Fall Festival that is open to our community. Each year has been a little bigger and more diverse than previous years. Most of this stuff would seem innoccuous to many, but here are a few that interested me - a taste of life in rural KY! The first picture shows a horse turning the crank that squeezes the juice out of cane (I would call it sugar cane but the folks who make the stuff call it sorghum).
The green stuff in the tank is stuff you eat. Seriously. They cooked the cane juice (also called sorghum by the makers) for hours, stirring it in a way that reminded me of a swimming pool net. The finished product is molasses - stout molasses. My dad ate molasses on waffles when I was a kid, and I thought it was horrid (I thought coffee was, too, but that has changed). The makers gave out some jars of the finished product, and Lela (who was still helping us adjust to parenthood at the time) made some amazing molasses cookies. We have since made three attempts to replicate her achievement, each time falling short.
We had live music throughout the day. The third picture shows one of the best groups of the day. It seems that most of the folks around here enjoy a different genre of music than I do!
We had one of those air-filled bouncy things that is fun for all ages and a dunking booth that looked like it was filled with the same green stuff that was squeezed out of the cane.
The barn that stands behind the dunking booth is a nicer specimen of a common KY feature - a tobacco barn. Most of them we see are missing more planks and appear to be ready to fall over like a house of cards. Tobacco farmers hang the cut tobacco leaves from the multiple levels of rafters in these barns to let the tobacco cure for awhile before stripping it. Much about our festival and the parts of it that people seem to enjoy most serves as a reminder of bygone years and the way things were.
2 comments:
That water really does look like molasses! And why don't we see a picture of you, John Mark, in the dunking booth? I think that should become one of your preacherly duties. The festival does look like fun though. Your small town kind of reminds me of Stars Hollow on Gilmore Girls with all of the fun local events (wasn't the gourd festival an upcoming attraction when I came to visit?).
The gourd festival was indeed just on the heels of your departure from Taylorsville, Kate. I'm so sorry you had to miss it, but don't worry, my mom purchased a gourd birdhouse to support the community's endeavors.
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