Garden
Farming
St. James Farmers
SAINT JAMES FARMERS
Saint James Parish farmers always begin harvesting their sugar cane crop in the month of October. We always hope they have a bumper crop year. Farmers throughout the country have had some very tough times.
I know how hard the farmers have to work. It takes a very
special person to be a farmer. First he has to know how to farm
and how to make the crop. But, too, he has to be a bookkeeper, a
mechanic, a purchasing agent, a weather forecaster and heaven
knows what else he has to know. 
Most St. James Parish farmers today are descendants of farmers. They learned well from their fathers and grandfathers. The small farmers who gave up to go into industry lease their lands to other farmers. Today there are fewer farmers in the parish, but the amount of land farmed is about the same. I think that in Grand Point, for instance, only two farmers raise cane, yet just about every acre is in production there.
The modern day sugar cane farmer is well educated and has the very best equipment available. He has, at his disposal, a constant flow of technical advice from L.S.U. You would think they just had to succeed. It doesn't seem to work that way. A sugar cane farmer is at the mercy of the elements and a constantly changing market.
If farmers of yesterday would come back and see how modern day farmers run their farms, they would never believe it. There has been some great improvements made over the years. Gone are the mules and the old wooden cane hoists. Cane cutters have replaced the cane knife and loaders do what was once done by hand. Shucks are burned off; in days gone by it had to be stripped off with a cane knife.
Huge trucks and tractors haul the cane to the mills. It was once hauled to the mills by the railroads. A cane train passing through Lutcher was a treat for every boy in town. A slow moving train was alot lighter by the time it arrived at the Bougere Mill.
In those days, farmers grew
"Cuban" cane. Those were big stalks and very tender and
juicy. The varieties today are alot hardier and more resistant to
disease.
There is only one sugar mill operating in St. James Parish today. In days gone by, just about every plantation had its own small mill. When Helvetia closed, it marked the end of an era on the east bank of the river. St. James Co-op on the west bank is the only mill operating in St. James Parish. Alot of east bank farmers haul their cane to the Evan Hall Mill located west of Donaldsonville.
Yoland Schexnayder has been farming all of his long life. I recently spent some time with him in Grand Point. He was reminiscing about how things have changed in Grand Point. How true, but it is still GRAND POINT.
by Leonce Haydel from STORIES FROM THE RIVER ROAD
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