Tobias grew sugarcane in a patch behind the house, it would grow taller than then kids and they loved to play hide and seek in it.  After buying a cane mill that had three rollers for squeezing the juice out of sugarcane, powered by a horse, later the mule, walking around in circles.  On the last day of October, the cane was cut, leaves stripped and put in piles to be milled.   The juice was put in a big vat to cook, and Rosalie had to take a wooden paddle to stir it to keep it from burning and then use a skimmer to skim the foam off it.  It was hard work for her but she kept at it until it boiled down into a clear syrup.  They would feed the skimmings to the pigs, others who made cane syrup would make moonshine out of them but Tobias didn’t believe in drinking. The syrup was put into bottles sealed with beeswax melted together with pine gum and pored over a cork or corn cob stoper.  They would keep some of the syrup but most they would sell.   

Drawing of her Father’s cane mill  by
Rosalie Anderson Mixson Diary
 1980’s

 

In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson vows to keep the US out of the war that had started in Europe.

1915