It is 1934, a Depression year, and ten-year-old Cammie Kirkland is glad that her family owns a cane mill. As long as she can remember, her family has raised acres of sorghum cane on their small North Carolina farm and from it, made molasses to sell in small grocery stores in Winston Salem. This year she and her cousin Ben are (proudly) old enough to be of real help in the family business.

The stories cover the entire cane growing and molasses-making season--from spring planting of the tiny seeds and thinning of the young cane sprouts, to the concentrated fall jobs of stripping off the leaves, boiling the juice to make molasses, canning the syrup, and selling the finished product.

Accounts of other farm activities, such as the fun of making valentines, burying a treasure trove, helping with the wheat-threshing dinners, and attending 4-H camp are included.

Elizabeth McMahan grew up on a small farm in the piedmont section of North Carolina, a seventh generation descendant of forebears who first settled there in the 1760’s. Like Cammie, she lived within a mile of both sets of grandparents, all staunch pillars of a closely-knit farming community with strong ties to school, church, and Grange. The middle of three sisters, she from her earliest years loved the out-of-doors, roaming the woods, spying out bird nests, and making insect collections to enter into competition at the county fair. These childhood interests were doubtless involved in determining her decision to become a zoologist, with a special interest in entomology. Her research specialty is termite biology, and her academic career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has included field research in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Australia, and India. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica and greatly enjoys travel by cargo ship.

That afternoon, when the big orange school bus let her off again at Granny’s mailbox, Cammie ran all the way home. In the air was the unmistakable scent of boiling molasses. Not everyone, she knew, enjoyed having the air laden with that sweet, distinctive odor, but to Cammie, it was like living beside a taffy factory.

She hurried into her overalls, then out the back door and through the pasture gate to the cane mill, still buckling the shoulder straps.

The mill was a bustling place. The throbbing of the gasoline engine overpowered all other sounds. A heavy drive belt stretched between the engine’s pulley cylinder and the grinder, where Uncle Ken, wearing leather gloves, was concentratedly feeding cane stalks between the rollers.

Cammie’s father was standing beside one of the steaming molasses pans in which a golden-brown syrup simmered. He was turning a valve on a pipe through which steam flowed from the boiler to the pan.

Grandpapa, positioned between the two pans, was skimming the roiling surfaces with a large flat sieve. The "skimmings" he dumped into a big wooden barrel. He smiled at his granddaughter but kept his steady pace.