The “Maw-maw” of RealCajunRecipes.com, my mom, grew up working on various farms with her 8 siblings. Though now many Cajun families are smaller (I have 3 siblings), Cajun famlies back then were big because of their religion (Catholicism) and because children in poor families were needed to work on the farms. Mom started her mornings before the sun would even rise. She would work a few hours in the field (picking cotton or sugarcane), go to school then return in the afternoon to continue working in the fields. As you can imagine, she was one of the children that actually loved school; it was a well-earned break from the hard, hot work in the fields. During the 2004 sugar cane season, Mom offered to write about her experiences.

According to the USDA, Louisiana is the second-largest producer of sugar from cane in the United States, with the industry contributing $500 to $600 million to Louisiana’s annual economy. I was part of that industry as a young child. My siblings and I did some cane planting, cutting, and harvesting as younger children. Sugar cane was our winter crop; whereas we had cotton, peppers and a truck farm for our summer crop.

We would plant the cane in early October for next years harvest using the current years growth. You would cut the cane where the “eyes” of the cane were showing. The eyes is where the offshoot came from. In hand cutting the cane, our crop was generally all cut and in by the Thanksgiving holiday. After that we would work for hire at our neighbors’ field. In going to the fields you made sure that every area of your body was covered with clothing as the cane leaf had a tendency to cut skin along with as we know now for sun protection too. . And you never went in the sun unless you had your chapeau paille - straw hat. And you didn’t forget the Mule brand light blue colored gloves.

Originally we would use mules and a wagon to get the crop in. Working with mules you get to understand that you can communicate with animals. Our mules early on were named Luckay and Patsay’. There were 4 words/sounds we learned when working with our mules. Chk Chk, a sound made in your cheek pocket to get the mules moving, Gee used to make them turn left and Haw to make them turn right and Whoa to stop.

Later we turned in the mules for our Allis Chalmers tractor..Allis-Chalmers’ history as a manufacturer extends to the 1840’s in Milwaukee. In 1914 the growing company entered into the farm equipment business. Over the years Allis-Chalmers was responsible for many innovations in farm equipment and grew to become one of the largest and most diverse manufacturers in North America. We would crank our old tractor to get her started being careful to let the crank go right when the engine started. Otherwise, your arm got cranked (cracked) up also. My dad kept his “old” tractor quite a while after he retired. I guess you can attach to inanimate objects.

My Dad, “Coon” as his friends called him and my brothers, Raywood, Francis, Harold and Glenn (MawMaw did it a couple of times but preferred driving the tractor and mules better) pretty much cut cane like the cane soldiers, as they were called in that day, did. Using a hand held cane machete, you would first, cut the dry part of the sugar cane leaf at the bottom of the stalk referred to in Cajun French as “la paille de canne (cone)” - the straw of the cane. ; then you would cut of the greener top leaves of the cane referred to as “la feuille de canne”. The hand action was a fast swinging motion; breaking the momentum or going to fast would result in cutting or splitting open your thigh or shin. It usually was the shin. Everyone of us had that battle scar on one or two of our leg; yep my Dad too.

My brothers and father would walk along sugarcane rows and gather the stalks in their upright positions. They cut the stalks at their base, remove their sugarless tops, and drop the stalks across two adjacent rows, forming what is called a heap row. The old harvesters were called “soldiers” deriving their name from the way the stalks seem to march while they’re being collected. Piles of the harvested cane were collected in a wagon and trucked by tractor to a nearby factory for processing. Once the wagon was loaded to full capacity, you would take the heavy chains and throw them across the wagon to the person on the other side. Since you could not see on the other side of the cane load, you always “called out” the signal that the chain was being thrown so the person on the other side would be aware. That person would then lock the chain securing the load. Once my Dad forgot to call out and ended up hitting my brother Raywood on the head; knocked him out cold. Raywood was taken to the doctor, but being “hard head”, he was not seriously hurt.

We would then “haul” the wagon loads of a cane to a nearby wholesaler, Mr Floyd Boudoin. He would then using the huge cane trucks that we see today, haul and resell to the nearby syrup mills such as Steens Syrup and Barras Sugar Mill. One of the rural roads nearby where I was raised was named after the owner of the Barras Syrup Mill - Germain Barras; Germain Road.

The USDA reports that although soldier harvesting was the accepted method for more than five decades, during the last few years many Louisiana producers have shifted to combine—or chopper—harvesting. According to Ben Legendre, former research leader of ARS’ Sugarcane Research Unit at Houma, Louisiana, and current sugarcane specialist with the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center (LSU AgCenter) at St. Gabriel, the shift corresponds with the introduction and expanded planting of a new, higher yielding crop variety known as LCP 85-384

Cane is steadily taken over rice production in Acadiana due to better weather conditions and crop prices.

Young Cajuns generally do not work on sugarcane farms but we do eagerly look forward to sugarcane season each year. It’s during this time that farmers in big machines transport massive amounts of sugarcane on Louisiana’s sideroads. The large trucks carrying the sugarcane are open-topped and so lots of sugarcane falls into the road during transportation. Cajun kids love picking up that sugar cane, bringing it home and chewing on it. To eat sugarcane, you first have to wash it, then peel it, then cut it into cubes. Chewing the sugarcane extracts pure, unprocessed, delicious sugar. MMM, baw! I’ve seen those fields out here in California but have never taken the time to go out and grab some of the sugarcane laying on the road. Nobody else does either, as far as I can tell. Maybe they see it as a sort of road-kill. Either way, next time, I’m picking some up!