CRESTVIEW — They've chewed cane and sopped syrup with biscuits. This weekend, Crestview High School outdoor education students will see how cane is processed into syrup.
A number of Ernie Martin’s students will visit Wayne and Sheila Youngblood’s farm in Escambia Farms next weekend.
But first, they whetted their taste buds.
On Nov. 10, two guest speakers — Martin's aunt, Fay Shaw, and his sister, Linda Mitchell, both retired teachers — ladled syrup onto plastic dishes at each table in the classroom.
They shared stories of family syrup-boiling gatherings each autumn, and described the process. Ten gallons of cane juice renders 1 pint of syrup, Mitchell said.
The women should know; after all, "this has been a family tradition passed down, oh, about four generations,” Shaw said.
But some things have changed over the years.
For instance, in Shaw’s childhood days, if you wanted syrup for your biscuits, you didn’t go to a store and buy a jarful: You visited the family syrup bucket.
Empty syrup buckets — which resembled paint cans with lids that were loosened by a penknife or screwdriver — later became students’ lunch boxes.
Students expressed enthusiasm for the tasty lesson, which, for many, brought a new experience. Of 16 students in Martin’s fourth-period class, more than half had never chewed cane or had syrup biscuits.
Sophomore Marc Mesaparticularly enjoyed the sampling session.
“Can I be adopted into this family?” he said while licking the syrup from his fingers for the first time in his life.
DID YOU KNOW?
There’s a right and a wrong way to sop a biscuit in cane syrup, and thanks to two retired teachers, students in Ernie Martin’s outdoor education classes know the technique:
After you break your biscuit in half, sop with the crust, not the broken side, or else the biscuit will become soaked and crumble.
“If you don’t know how to sop, you’re going to be in trouble,” Martin said.
Martin also taught the classes how to make a “country boy doughnut.” Just pinch a plug out of the middle of a biscuit and fill the hole with syrup.
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: CHS students sop biscuits, learn local sugar cane traditions (VIDEO)