Molasses — that dark, sweet liquid that tastes so good on a hot
biscuit — was once a staple on every farm in eastern North Carolina

Melvin Price and Lucy making molasses

My dad’s family made molasses and to him molasses on a sweet potato was a meal. He told me all about how they grew the cane and made the molasses. I can almost see it.

Melvin Price and his brother William Earl still make molasses like my dad did. It is magic.  Melvin pushes the stalks between two rollers and it is mashed until the liquid comes out into a pail.

Mind you, he can’t do it without Lucy, his mule. While Melvin is pushing the cane into the extractor, Lucy is walking in a circle around Melvin. She is actually the power behind this mechanism. Every once in awhile Lucy stops to chew on some of the cane – it is so good!  Then Melvin will cluck and Lucy starts up again.

Lucy, the grand mule

Each time Lucy and the pole come by, Melvin ducks – it’s just the natural thing to do.

When Melvin and Lucy get a bucket of the sweet juice, William Earl pours it into a big container with a fire under it. This cooks off some of the water.

He opens a faucet and allows a certain amount of this steamy liquid to pour into a flat copper cooking pan with divisions in it and he stirs and stirs and stirs. This whole process takes about 8 hours. When it is thick and syrupy, the golden nectar is ready.

William Earl Price stirs his molasses

Melvin and William Earl got about 15 gallons this day – it took all day. Molasses recipes are coming, I promise.

PS – Big thanks to North Carolina’s own, Molasses Creek, for providing the soundtrack to the video. The song’s called “Still Love Fridays.” They are a wonderful band!

Vollis Simpson, called the
Junkyard Poet of Whirligigs and Windmills
by the New York Times

Vollis Simpson is a craftsman of brightly painted metal art –
giant creations he calls windmills and we call whirligigs.

Driving through eastern North Carolina looking for Lucama and Vollis Simpson's Whirligig Farm, you begin to wonder if you are lost. And then around the corner, there they are – colorful, folksy whirligigs erected atop tall poles, all spinning and creaking and shining in the sun. With reflector tape on the spinning blades, they shine in the moonlight too.

I met Mr. Simpson last summer. He was working in his shop – I was kinda hanging around and he invited me in. His workshop is stuffed … really stuffed with his metal creations, all made from objects he has collected. I saw a slight grin when he told me about the 85- foot whirligig he made for the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore; I think he used a toaster in that one.

Just this week we had fun mom and daughter guests Anna and Kate, who drove all the way from Philadelphia to see Vollis Simpson's art work and to stay at Big Mill B&B.  Kate wants one of his creations and I bet she gets one.

This is American Folk Art, sometimes called Outsider Art. Whatever the name, it is worth a trip to the small eastern North Carolina community of Lucama.  But go now, you might be able to sit and talk to Vollis Simpson, still working at 92.

And buy something. I did and my wonderful helicopter whirligig loves living on the farm at Big Mill Bed & Breakfast.

Try to go on a windy day or a windy night with a full moon.