Foodie Adventures in Latin America: Panama, part II

One particular highlight of my trip to Panama was when I was invited to visit a local farmer and experience using a sugar cane press. This was of particular interest to me because of connections with the Virgin Islands and having spent considerable amounts of time both visiting and studying the sugar cane plantation industry that took place in the Carribean using slave labor. In visiting Annaburg for example on St. John, a visitor is taken back in time to see the ruins of where the cane was collected and crushed, then would have been boiled in vats to make the eventual end product of rum.

After we had visited with the newly born calf, and chased away by it's mother...it was time to collect the sugar cane. In the above photo, you can see Lila collecting the stalks of sugar cane that Ferra has cut with his machete. Then it was time to head to the press. Typically the press would be operated by animal power, most likely a burro. The horse would have to be blindfolded so that it wouldn't get dizzy from walking in a circle. I am still confused about how being blindfolded helps the horse.

As two of us strained to push the heavy wooden beam in circles to get the press working, the farmer fed stalks of cane into the metal gear frame. The crushed stalks were then pulled out of the other side, and the juice collected underneath and emerged from a plastic tube where Chichi and Lila caught the streaming liquid into a pan and bottles.

The sugar cane juice that we collected tasted amazing, and not just because of how exhausted we were from the effort that went into pressing it. I was surprised to see the color was dark green, but the liquid was warm and not overly sugary. It didn't need to be strained or purified, and so there were pieces of crushed fibers found in every sip, but it was so delicious, that it didn't matter. I took a movie of the whole process, but it's not uploaded currently. I will keep trying, so check back to view!