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A tradition that our family has had for over 20 years
has been cooking syrup on Thanksgiving Day. The fine and almost lost art
of making syrup was passed down to us by our late grandfather, Jim Boyett
and our father, Harry M. Freeman. Daddy worked very long and hard to make
certain that so much of what he knew about our southeast Georgia rural way
of life was understood by us and respected and preserved. Daddy went home
to be with the Lord on Sunday, August 25, 2002, but the lessons of life,
respect, honor, and so much more will be cherished and we will try our best
to live by until we meet with him again. We, as a family hope that you enjoy
the pictures of our last cane grindin’ and syrup cookin’ with Daddy and by
God’s Grace we will have many more Thanksgiving Cane Grindin’s as Granddaddy
and Daddy would have wanted it.God Bless, The Harry Freeman Family |
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Photos by Stacey Freeman
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 | Harry M. Freeman on his Super C Farmall pulling our Rourke’s Iron Works mill. |
 | My brothers Tim feeding the mill and Steven pushing down “Pumins”. |
 | Another view of Daddy pulling the mill with his Farmall. |
 | Picture of my nephew, Joshua (Tim’s Son) on his and Daddy’s Economy. Joshua was 5 years old at this time. |
 | Tim and Steven loading juice into the 80 gallon boiler. |
 | My job is to keep the furnace fired (Stacey). This is an image of the fire just beginning to heat up the juice. The furnace we use is called a round furnace in our part of Georgia. |
 | This picture is of the fire with the juice in a full boil with the steam coming off of it. We basically cook 72 gallons of water out of 80 to end up with about 8 gallons of syrup over about a 4 hour period. Once the furnace is hot, the cooking time is cut considerably. |
 | We are cooking under Daddy’s watchful eyes. From the left is Daddy (Harry M. Freeman), his sister Alice Boyd, my cousin Lynn, and good friend Ella Etzler. |
 | The next 4 views are of the juice cooking to syrup. The wagon rim allows skimmins to cook over the top so we can wipe them from the rim of the boiler |
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 | Friends Wayne and Linda Oliff and brother Steven (Far left) soppin syrup. |
 | Image of Daddy and Mama (back facing me ) and family and friends enjoying the fresh cooked biscuits, sausage, and syrup. |
