Things Muscovado Making and Farming (Part 2)

I'm taking time off writing. I've been doing a lot of it in the office and it's drained much of my creative juices. i have to stop, read and reflect on my thoughts, otherwise i'd just post one bitter sounding entry after another. and that is not good. not good at all.

These pictures are meant to be posted months ago but, again, i was stumped with work making it impossible to me to open my computer at home for leisure activities--yes, like blogging.

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A couple from southern Philippines visited our house last February, wanting to learn more about muscovado production. in one of the incidental tours, we brought them to one of the oldest and biggest muscovado mills and sugarcane farm in the area. It is owned by an old prominent, political (used to be, i think) family in the province. You can judge by the size of the acacia tree how old the place was. My only regret is, i ran out of battery before i could take a picture of the run-down wooden mansion which was probably the central object of the hacienda during its heydays. There is now another structure few meters from the mill, also made of wood, a little smaller than the one i previously mentioned but just as interesting.

I wanted to further explore, document the details but my camera died out on me. I spent the rest of the time in awe, moving from one awesome object to another. my amazement was mostly due the humongous sizes of not only the mill, but the vats, the acacia trees, the expanse of the sugar cane plantation, of which i have never and have only seen for the very first time. I have a long history with muscovado because i used to accompany my grandmother to muscovado mills and most of them, including ours, are small scale,  being that muscovado-making is a small scale project in the first place. That will, of course change when industrialization takes over but i don;t think that will happen in the near future.

and the pictures are....:

smoke stack. and part of the shed that houses the crusher.

da Crusher. da bomb. imported from Glasgow, Scotland. manufactured in 1886. My father said that this was meant to be used with steam as source of power. 

the crusher and its posse, another view. with actual che-guevarra-shirt-wearing-human used for size reference. 

one of them crusher's gears where the belt is attached. i'm practically clueless about this machine and its parts and that's just too bad, i can't really explain so much. that little thing there in the background is a tractor, manufactured in Chicago, Illinois. Sadly, it's not working anymore. My mother said that the owner wants to keep them that way, like a live museum or something. If that is what really it's meant to do, then he's already succeeded. his living museum has gotten my attention and got it really well. 

the area where they fire things up. 

and a closer look at the furnace.

from the furnace, this is how the bagasse shed looks like.

boy, look at the size of that vat!

and some other things that are very much worth your while.

This is the acacia tree i was talking about. sugarcane fields at the background. and farmers preparing the sugarcane buds (patdan) for planting. 

farmer's kids. my kid chased them around, wanting to play with them but they were just too shy.

old american truck. piece of history. amazing.

another type of crusher, this one carabao-powered. design is with reference to classical architecture. 

and voila, the classical arch.

that wraps up the farming and muscovado thing for this time. maybe i'd go home in the next few months. maybe i'd be seeing more of this or more of the others. maybe. maybe not. maybe yes. maybe. maybe.

FIN