kafir corn

[W. Gray]

An odd (to me anyway) crop my grandparents grew was kafir corn. That was also imported from Africa and was named for a tribe there.

I dont know what value this crop had other than feed, maybe. I remember it as being colorful.

[Wilma]

You could pop it like pop corn.  Wasn't as good, but was a change from the usual.  Made good chicken feed and if cut at the right time, good silage.  I don't know what the difference between kafir corn and milo is, they looked the same to me.  Today's milo fields are as beautiful when ready for harvest as are the wheat fields.

[W. Gray]

 A Kansas State Historical Society comment says that a contributing factor to the decline of kafir was that kafir had to be harvested with horse-drawn equipment and required hand processing whereas milo could be easily cut with the combines.  As a result, kafir became a memory for Kansas farm families and milo took its place.

My grand folks used two-horse teams (whereas one of my uncles would use a three-horse team) but he also had a tractor and maybe a combine. I do not remember him using horses to reap any type of crop, though.

[Diane Amberg]

How about Sorghum?

[frawin]

Diane, I am sure that Maize and Kafir Corn are both Sorgums.

[Wilma]

I think there was a cane crop that was specifically for sorghum.  My grandparents used to press the sap from the cane.  I don't know what they did after that, whether it was cooked or just kept as pressed.  I didn't like it much because it didn't taste like Karo syrup.  Somewhere I have a photo of the pressing.  I was probably less than three years old at the time as I am sure that the press disappeared in the tornado that destroyed their farmstead in 1933.

[Delbert]

Moline had a kafir corn festival every year.  I remember riding on a wagon pulled by horses that my father used to go get kafir corn bundles so to feed the cattle.    The heads of the  kafir corn had been removed and run through a combine.   It seemed like all at once everyone stopped planting it. 

[W. Gray]

During high school and college, I worked in the grocery business. Around 1964, I was working in a huge grocery store that billed itself as the largest west of Chicago. It was close to 10pm closing time and I was stocking shelves. My last item to stock was a really heavy case containing six large bulky cans of Sorghum. The cans were similar to paint cans with a pressure fitted top that had to be pried open with a flat blade screwdriver.

We did not sell much sorghum and this was the only time I ever put the stuff on the shelf. I lifted a can up to place it on the shelf. The can slipped from my hands and fell from about waist high to the floor landing top side down on the lid edge of the can popping the top open. Only time in my life I ever saw that happen.

Sorghum started oozing over the floor. Having had to clean up syrup on numerous situations without any problems, I took my time to get the materials I needed. That sorghum, though, turned out to be the hardest mess I ever cleaned up in eight years of working in the grocery business.

It was normally a customer who would drop a glass bottle of Karo syrup and break it. The usual way of cleaning high viscous stuff, such as syrup, from the floor was to cut off two flaps of a sturdy cardboard box and use these two flaps as squeegees sliding the edges at an angle toward each other on the floor to gather as much syrup and glass as possible on the two box flaps. Those syrupy box flaps would then go in the trash and the process would be repeated until the floor was just a little sticky. Running a mop several times would result in a clean floor. That did not exactly work for the sorghum. That stuff was really viscous and the floor was still rather sticky when I finished.

A night man washed the floor with a machine every night and next morning he wanted to know what happened on aisle 20.

[frawin]

Waldo, my Brother had the Big Cans of Sorgum in His Store in Howard. My dad Loved Sorgum and put it on His Biscuits often. Years ago we were in Elk Falls with Myrna's Mother, at the Elk Falls Trade Days and there was a Man
there with A Sorgum Press, he had a Mule hooked to it, the Mule was turning the Sorgum Press and the sorgum Juice was running out into Buckes, We bought A gallon Can of the Finished Product. We used it up years ago, and have not Purchased any since.

[W. Gray]

I tasted sorghum once. Cannot recall where but it must have been on the grandparents farm. I was like Wilma. I did not like it and if I remember correctly it had a distinctive sharp odor. I have some old pictures around here somewhere of someone in my mom's family pressing cane of some type to make the stuff.