Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1895 — IN A VERMONT SUGAR BUSH [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN A VERMONT SUGAR BUSH

THE season of maple sugar making comes at a time when the farmer could not profitably employ his time otherwise, usually about March 10, and continues three or four weeks, according to the weather. Sap will run only when the temperature Is at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and stop running as soon as frost is out of the ground, or directly after the snow is gone. Sometimes the cold weather continues so late in the spring that it is nearly April 1 before the thermomete* goes above 30 degrees. In 1893 the farmers in Vermont did not tap the trees until the latter part of March. Last year the tapping began about March 8 or 9.

As soon as the weather is favorable the farmer gets out his buckets and sets to work tapping his maple trees as quickly as possible. The maple trees are tapped by boring the trunks with a small bit—usually half-inch—about Ift inches deep, and from one to three feet above the ground. Trees are not tapped until they are about one foot in diameter. After tapping, a spout made of clean maple, beach, tin or galvanized Iron and fitted with a hanger for holding the bucket, is driven firmly Into the hole made by the bit; a bucket of tin or wood is hung upon the spout, and the tapping process is finished. The buckets are ordinary water palls, generally all alike, and each farmer usually paints all his buckets one color. Only one bole is bored in young trees, but it is not uncommon to have as many as half a dozen buckets, with two spouts each, hung to maples of large size. If the bucket fills with sap In a day the run is a good one, although twice this amount is obtained in exceptionally favorable sap days. What

is called a “good-sized” sugar orchard will contain from 500 to 800 trees. There are many orchards of 1,500 trees, and In the -northern and central parts of Vermont orchards of 2,000 to 4,000 trees are not uncommon. When the sap begins to run well the farmer and all his family must work hard. A man with a large farm will employ help outside of his family frequently, and use two or three pairs of oxen or horses to make the rounds of the trees with a sled on

which is the large sap tub into which the sap from the buckets is poured. An orchard of 700 or 800 or even 1,000 trees need not require the farmer to hire help, if he has two or three men or boys in the family besides himself. From an orchard of 700 trees an ordinary run of sap for two days will enable the'farmer to collect about eighty barrels. Sometimes sixty barrels of eap can be collected trom 700 trees in one flay. As soon as the men begin collecting the sap, the fires in the big evaporator furnace must be started, and the boiling of the sap begun as fast as it is brought in, so that none will be wasted by souring, or the quantity brought from the woods may not so far exceed the accommodations at the house that waiting to get room for it much 'will he wasted at the trees. At the tjnje when the sap ik running freely the farmer must often keep the fires going and the sap boiling all through the night, and, of course, he is likely to have to work all day Sunday and Sunday night as any other time of the we?k. It is all-important that he “make hay while the sun shines,” When the work is hardest the fun is at its best. Those who have but a small orchard will “spare” some of the family to help a relative or neighbor through sugaring. And the siigar parties—what one of Vermont’s sons or daughters ever forgets them? The snow is still upon the ground, and as night comes on the clear cold air upon the rock-ribbed hills brings the color to the cheeks and quickens the step. And the smell of good maple syrup—well, perhajts, that may have something to l «f>. wfth 'quk-keaiag the step; but the young people are not long on the road to a sugar party. The time it requires * An average computation has never been attempted; for, as at husking bees, the

young man has the girl of his choice if he can get her. At the party the hot sugar is dropped upon the snow and forms into “frogs” and various other imaginative reproductions of animal life before it is considered at the stage of perfection for eating. Some have bowls of snow and saucers of hot sap, and the great fun of a “sugaring off” party is to sit out on the wood pile, covered with buffalo skins, and “candy” the sugar by pouring a spoonful on the snow in the bowl and eat It with doughnuts and crullers.

Sometimes a small branch of stripped maple or beach Is dipped into the kettle and you have the fun of twirling it until It cools. Then you break off the candled branches. The modern evaporator makes it possible to do much sugar making In a short time. The evaporator is made of tin, copper or galvanized iron, and is so constructed that the sap flows in at one end, and, by means of partitions extending nearly across the pan, is made to take a zigzag course to the other end, where it is drawn off as syrup. The sap in the pan is kept shallow—about one-half Inch In depth—and evaporates very rapidly. Rapidity of evaporation Is greatly to be desired, not only on the score of time but because the sooner sap is converted into syrup after It runs from the trees the lighter will be the color and the finer the flavor of the syrup and sugar. The sugar house is a rough little building, with a shed half full of welldried cordwood for the boiling fire. The room is mainly occupied by the boiling apparatus, with the bunk of the man who has to'watch the pans of boiling sap day and night. One side Is taken up by the oven, which is built on a bed of brick and consists of two brick walls about two feet apart, 2ft feet high and 12 feet long, with an iron door at the end near the shed entrance to the house. A huge, old-fashioned brick chimney stands at the other end, where there also is a sort of square, brick furnace to hold a big kettle. In the roof, near the center of the ridge pole, a large slot opens to the sky as an escape for the steam, which rises in heavy volumes from the pans on the Are. The sap as it comes from the maple tree is like water and has barely any

more flavor than good water. But it doesn’t take much heat to produce flavor. A barrel of good sap will make a gallon of syrup or eight pounds of sugar. After being reduced to syrup in the evaporator the product is allowed to cool and settle, more or less of impurities being precipitated by standing. The syrup is now ready for putting into cans for sale. The size mostly in use is one gallon. The proper consistency of syrup is generally conceded to be 11 pounds to the-gallon, and this degree of density is reached at 219 degrees Fahrenheit. The sap is never made into more than syrup in the evaporator. Then it is poured into a large porcelain lined kettle to be boiled to sugar. If wanted for sugar the boiling is continued until the thermometer indicates 232 degrees for pail sugar, or 238 or 240 degrees for cake, when the mass is removed from the fire, stirred briskly

for a short time, and then poured into tin pails or cake moulds, as the case may be, to harden. The cake moulds are often a series of parallel partitions on a large wooden board, with spaces In them about three inches apart, and JustAvide enough to admit a knife blade The moulds are dampened with a sponge, then the hot sugar poured in. Little fancy tins are also used for moulds. The farmer gets anywhere from 10 to 18 cents per pound

for bin sugar, and from 75 cents to |1 a gallon for his sirup. A sugar maple produces on an average aboat 3ft pounds of sugar during a season.

IN THE SUGAR ORCHARD.

THE SUGAR HOUSE.

OX SLED AND SAP TANK.