I love this time of the year. September is slipping over the horizon and the month of October is the same as here. October has always been special for me because it was the month of my birth. Birthdays are pretty big events in our family, and coming from a dairy family, we “milk” them for everything they’re worth. The opposite of birth is death, which also has somewhat of a celebration, but at least during the birth celebration, the person being celebrated gets to enjoy the food. And I guess it is the food that I do really enjoy.
The day I was born, my daddy had to sell one of our meat hogs to pay the doctor. It cost $25 to bring me into this world. And you know, every time I would get into trouble as a kid and the price of hogs would be up, I could swear I would hear my daddy say under his breath, “I wish I had that hog back.” But he loved me, and one year, he even bought me a football helmet for my birthday to prove it. I never played football, but it was great for protecting your head when jumping a bicycle across ditches and gullies. On second thought, I guess the hog was a better buy.
We also have the changing of the leaves, the cooler temperatures, as well as hayrides and festivals going on now, but it’s also chili, wiener roasts, and molasses time, to name just a few fall favorites. It all started for me when the September equinox occurred, and the sun rose directly in the east and set directly in the west on that day; I started thinking about autumn farm parties. You know the kind, those with lots of pumpkins and straw sitting around, along with happy scarecrows inviting you in for some cider and molasses cookies to warm the cockles of your heart – whatever they may be. I love fall days down on the farm, and the festivals that hit this time of the year are what a harvest moon and a corn shock were created for. The only problem associated with this time of the year is that there aren’t enough Saturdays to fit in all the festivals I want to go to.
There is one I try to attend each year, and I suggest you do the same. It is located at the Oscar Farris Agricultural Museum in Nashville. The annual Music and Molasses Festival takes place this year Oct. 18 through 19 at the museum located on the grounds of Ellington Agriculture Center in southwest Nashville. It’s a special event that draws a large number of people from the Nashville area, as well as across the state. During the two days of the Music and Molasses Festival, visitors have the opportunity to see and taste molasses being cooked over a wood fire by the Guenther family from Muddy Pond, up in Overton County. A horse is used to press the juice from the cane, and then the molasses is slowly cooked and skimmed off to produce the final product.
The grounds contain several log cabins and even a log schoolhouse complete with the hickory stick over in the corner to keep kids in order. There’s even an old-fashioned lye soap making demonstration outside a log cabin along with folks dressed in period costumes to make the day even more authentic. That lye soap could come in handy this year to help keep the flu virus at bay.
There are spinning demonstrations, wood carving, herb garden information, rides in buggies, broom making, lots of food, and plenty of old time music. It’s two days truly made for a celebration of fall – and a chance to get your cockles warmed, as I said before.
If you’ve never been to the Oscar Farris Agricultural Museum, then you have missed out on a lot of agricultural history all gathered under one roof. It contains a collection of thousands of agricultural hand tools, implements, artifacts, clothing, buggies, wagons, and just about anything used in agriculture production from days gone by. The collection is housed in a huge white barn, with two levels of exhibits. The Tennessee Agriculture Hall of Fame is also located in the museum. It allows you the opportunity to see how some individuals have made major contributions to the Tennessee agriculture success story. There’s no admission fee to see the museum, and it would surely be worth your time to visit one of the best agriculture information sites in the state. The museum presents, for the novice, what farming was like in Tennessee from the time the area was settled up until the era of the introduction of the tractor.
It’s molasses time in Tennessee! So cook up some biscuits with creamy butter and let’s get to soppin’. Fall is in the air!
Pettus L. Read writes for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted at pettusr60@gmail.com.