Harvestin' Cane Juice

So our newest project on Garden Green has been harvesting sugar cane and pressing it into cane juice, which is what sugar is made of.

Now, cutting down sugar cane is a big project. You usually try to break it off at the roots and twist it out, but that only works on the bigger ones that are too heavy to resist. The smaller ones are much less yielding, so we have to use these big ole' lobster claw choppers to get them out. But you can't let the leaves touch you because they have these little 'hairs' on them that stick in your skin and make you itchy. Very annoying!

So after you've chopped them, you cut the roots and the green stalks at the top and then cleave them in half - literally with a meat cleaver.

Finally, you use a cane press to squeeze the stalks and harvest the juice. We are lucky enough to have a mechanical one, which means we don't have to crank it by hand.

The resulting liquid is like simple syrup, except grayish-brown. We've been 'harvesting' it in recycled milk jugs and taking it straight to the fridge. On ice, it's refreshing and delicious (despite the color)! And the only thing you don't use is the squeezed stalk, which makes great fertilizer.

We usually stop here and drink the stuff, but if you wanted to make the white stuff you buy in stores, you'd boil down the cane juice to make brown sugar, and then bleach and process the brown sugar to get the normal white stuff.

Best uses for cane juice? In your coffee, on the rocks, or in mojitos. Mmmmm.