A decade ago, a Garden City couple were recognized for sticking with tradition.
Coby and Doris Schrock were the official sorghum makers at the Silver Dollar City Festival in Branson. They used an old-fashioned technique to make the sweet syrup. The process included a mule-powered press and dated back to `the 19th century.
“We work hard but thoroughly enjoy it,” Doris Schrock said then.
Each year the Schrocks taught others the old-fashioned sorghum-making process at the festival, and their hard work was rewarded in 2006, when they were named persons of the year by other crafts people and a panel of judges.
“It meant a lot to us,” Coby Schrock said.
In 2006, the Schrocks had spent 11 years at the festival. They said many people over 50 were well acquainted with sorghum, but younger people didn’t have a clue about it. “But they’re very interested in it,” Coby Schrock said.
The couple made sorghum for several hours a day, five days a week during the festival, which ran in September and October. That level of activity requires much sorghum cane, which the couple grew at their Garden City home.
Source: Couple keeps with tradition to make sorghum | Community News | Cass County Democrat Missourian