Sharon's blog: Hunter's Moon

The Hunter's Moon has been teasing me through my kitchen window this weekend, about 30 minutes later each night. Tonight it's making me wait, most likely till long after midnight. Sixty years ago right about this time I was out in the cane field watching Uncle Doc's old mule go round and round crushing cane till the juice dripped into the boiling pot below the crushing stones.

The Hunter's Moon is the first full moon after the harvest moon, which is the full moon nearest the autumnal equinox. That puts it right about the 10th or 11th of October. Seemed like it happened every year, we'd get a dry spell and that cane would be good and ripe and then it was time to make molasses. We've had a good long dry spell this year, I wonder if anybody is harvesting cane.

A lot of people used the nights of the Hunter's Moon to hunt, stock up on wild meat for the winter, mostly birds since they were most likely migrating about that time. And it was also a time to finish harvesting crops. A lot of people in those days lived by the moon, most of them didn't bother with a clock or a calendar.

I wasn't interested in killing animals or stockpiling meat, but I was excited about making molasses. Seems like everybody came from all around and helped. It would take about all night long and the light of the fire beneath the boiling pot of sugar cane lit the faces of all the older men and women, feeding the fire, stirring the pot, making them seem like our red skinned ancestors conducting an ancient ritual.

The mountains were so tall I never could see much of the sky, but I knew as soon as the time was just right, the moon would peep over the rim of trees high above my head, and its light would brighten my world in the head of that holler. By the time it reached the other mountain and started falling out of sight, moms would be herding children, taking them back home to their beds. The men and some of the older grannies stayed and stirred the pot, fed cane into the crushing stones, making molasses. And the old mule went round and round.

The sweet sticky scent lingered in the holler for days, along with hickory smoke that took up residence and hovered over the roofs of our homes. By the time the moon waned till it was only a sliver, the smoke had drifted away, but the sweet tangy scent of boiling sugar cane lingered on the falling leaves and left behind only a memory.

Red faces, a tired old mule, the bright sizzle of a drop of boiling cane syrup hitting the fire; I can see it all reflected in the face of the same Hunter's Moon that hangs low over my house tonight. If I close my eyes, I can smell the tangy sweetness mixed with hickory smoke, and I can remember the first taste of hot molasses and homemade butter on Ninna's homemade biscuits.

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