How many of us Baby Boomers remember grandparents or parents coming home with cane syrup in a shiny silver paint can? If you were born in the Southeastern United States I would venture a guess that it’s most of us.
Some might say making cane syrup is becoming a dying art. This newspaper even featured an article in Profile 2020 on the Nelson family who live near New Hope reviving the craft of making molasses.
Now a Magee family has taken on learning the particular, labor intensive techniques of growing sugar cane with the express intent of producing what they call “liquid gold.”
Roy and Julia Montz provide the land and also help with the hands-on labor along with eldest son Matt who oversees the whole syrup production. Roy and Julia love the opportunity created by this adventure to have good quality family time while producing 100% pure cane syrup with no additives. Matt resides in Alabama with his daughter, Sarah Mackenzie.
Matt quipped, “Full disclosure— this is a hobby with potential. And so it was a combination of things. The practical part of it was, eventually I hope to retire here and do something with the land. What is that? I don’t know. At one point we thought about growing chestnut trees. I planted 20 chestnut trees to see what would happen, with plans to plant hundreds more.”
For a variety of reasons chestnuts didn’t make it, notwithstanding the fact that the squirrels could get them faster than they could be harvested. In addition, Roy planted blueberries but as Matt said, “You’re one frost away from no harvest that year.”
At that point Matt began researching sugar cane. He had good memories of working during the summers with his Papaw, Billy Stubbs, on his land. Beginning his junior year of high school in 1988 Matt first stayed a couple of weeks. Then during his college years he found himself spending his entire summer helping out Papaw. He mended fences, tended cows, bush hogged, cut hay.
In addition, Mr. Stubbs always had a cane patch in his garden. Matt said, “Papaw and Uncle Shorty would take it down to the local mill and have it turned into syrup and put into paint cans. It was in paint cans stacked up behind the dining room door. One of the fondest memories I have is when he cracked that thing open and we’d have it on biscuits. This was the only place I ever had cane syrup.”
That memory is all the sweeter to Matt since both his papaw and Uncle Shorty are no longer here.
Growing sugar cane was born from trying to discover a practical product combined with something no longer common. They completed their second year at growing, harvesting, extracting and boiling juice in the fall of 2022.
“We’re still trying to learn how to grow sugar cane. The first year we grew sugar cane and took that and planted some more. Last year we made some syrup and it was pretty good. This year we made it again and it was much better. And there’s still room for improvement,” Matt explained.
Research materials are very dated and available primarily through university agricultural extensions like Mississippi State University, where they do perform research on sugar cane. But the resources date back to the 1940’s and 1950’s.
However, father and son have found sources on Facebook like Southern Syrup Makers Association and Alabama Syrup Makers Association (ASMA). Matt reached out to the president of the ASMA and discovered they hold a syrup making workshop in Dothan, AL.
Matt was asked how much acreage he planned to plant in sugar cane. His response was initially ¼ to as much as an acre but possibly one day as much as 20-40 acres. “There was a really long pause. ‘Now you know that’s a lot of sugar cane!’” Matt said with a smile. He continued, “In a well cultivated acre of sugar cane you can get 200-300 gallons of syrup.” Upwards to 40 acres would produce thousands of gallons of finished product.
Their current equipment housed in the Montz shop accommodates their plantings of a patch with a few rows and may be able to handle as much as five acres. However, beyond that a major upgrade would be required to make it a real commercial venture.
Their first year planting was 100 stalks; this year 200. The extracted juice to syrup ratio is about 10:1. The 2022 yield was 20 gallons of juice making three to four gallons of syrup. Julia said they actually planted less cane this year but produced more syrup. “This year because we had so much rain and then it was so dry, we had so much more juice in that cane.”
Because sugar cane is a grass it is not a difficult crop to grow, running on a three year rotation. “Grass does not struggle to grow. Once it’s in the ground planted in September/October, it will start to grow and get hammered with the first frost and go dormant. Then early in the spring when the soil warms up, it will start growing again, emerging out of the ground. We’re not irrigating. It will make more juice if it’s irrigated but it’s pretty tolerant of drought or rain,” Matt explained.
The production cycle is about a year as they plan a week in the fall to harvest the sugar cane leading to the extraction and cooking of the liquid. Matt says right now they have pause points during the process; however, the majority of the work the family does in one day. “The times we’ve done it we’ve stripped it, cut it, crushed it, and cooked it all in the same day, which is a long day. When we get a little bit further we’ll have a stripping day, cutting day, cooking day.”
He said their biggest issue is weed control. There are several acres of bahiagrass that they have not been able to get a handle on. Since sugar cane is also a grass, it cannot be poisoned. Like others, Matt said that eventually during the fallow year of crop rotation they will spray with a herbicide to eliminate the weeds and bahia.
Matt reiterated that it is still a hobby at this point. “We’re enjoying ourselves. It has been very interesting to watch the community reaction. We’re just winging this right now, making syrup and learning as we go. But the more people that find about it, the same connections that they have…’my daddy, or my granddaddy, or I had an uncle, he had a mill, he used to take it down to this’ – there’s this same kind of thing that folks are having that a-ha moment; they’re like, ‘I want some.’
“There’s even a few people I let taste it. I brought biscuits and syrup to my Sunday school class – 20 people – about half of them knew exactly what this is. The other half didn’t have a clue. The ones that knew said, ‘Oh, this brings back memories!’ The ones that didn’t said, ‘I’ve never tasted anything like this before’; because this doesn’t exist in the stores.”
Regardless of all that is involved in the process Roy loves the whole process. “I badger Matthew all year long about the cane; I really do. I know he gets tired of hearing it. I just have a really good time doing it. And it’s a good family activity.”
