Carrying on A Historic Cultural Tradition: Cane Grinding at the Georgia Museum of Agriculture

Published 11:36 am Monday, July 25, 2022

TIFTON—While it may not seem like a very exciting event by modern standards, the prominence and popularity of the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Georgia Museum of Agriculture’s cane grinding event shows how much the practice was and continues to be a pillar of community spirit.

Hosted annually in November, the event is a recreation of the historical cane grinding and syrup cooking process commonly practiced in Georgian towns over 100 years ago. 

“There’s a science to the process of making cane syrup, growing it, and what it looks like,” GMA Director Garrett Boone said. “Our job as the Museum of Agriculture is to pass that along, help educate people on what that culture was, what that history is, and shoe what that was, what it meant to people.”

While the event is certainly a detailed look into the procedures of crushing cane stalks into juice through a cane mill, then cooking that juice into cane syrup, where Boone truly sees the value of cane grinding is in the way it brings the community together.

“For the families around here, it’s kind of a gamily gathering, a reunion, neighborhood gathering, or communal event,” Boone said. “It still is to this day, for families that grind cane and make syrup. That feel is still the same.”

In addition to the members of the community that attend as spectators, the GMA often has volunteers in droves helping to run the event, who in turn often receive support from their friends and family in processes like cooking cane syrup. Boone reported that the museum regularly has a three-generation trio of volunteers assisting in passing on the culture and history of cane grinding.

This sense of community doesn’t just stop at Tifton, however, or even Georgia. Boone stated that the event regularly receives visitors from other towns, states, and even countries.

Wanting to contribute to the passion and cheer of the event, the GMA staff hosts other activities alongside the cane grinding, like musical accompaniment, or providing traditional refreshments and snacks like biscuits and sausage or even samples of the syrup.

The GMA’s staff benefit as much from the community spirit as the other participants. Boone fondly looks back on his past cane grindings across his eleven years at GMA, appreciating that the event became such a good opportunity to reconnect with people he rarely saw or hadn’t seen in a while.

As an annual celebration at the museum for almost thirty years, nearly as long as the museum has been open, cane grinding has certainly become just as much a part of Tifton’s community and culture today as it did in its heyday–something the event looks to continue in the years to come.

“[Cane grinding] is one of the events and demonstrations that really brings people together,” Boone stated. “It always has, I think it will continue to do so, and it does the same for us.”