More from our series on molasses. This is the time of the year to plant sugar cane. Born in 1915, 90-year-old Ella Baker grew up in the rural farming hamlet of Cloverdale, Virginia in Fluvanna County where her family planted sugar cane. In and oral history she shared with me a story about a one-legged old man named Mr. Henry Lewis who made money going from house to house with a portable sugar cane grinder and a vat pulled on a horse drawn wagon. Those who grew sugar cane on their farms bartered with him to have him turn their sugar cane into cans of molasses. For example, Lewis would produce nine cans of molasses and receive three of them as his fee.
