Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 January 1880 — Maple Sugar Making. [ARTICLE]

Maple Sugar Making.

The best sap-weather is when the wind is south-west, with fleecy clouds by day, and clear nights cold enough to freeze a little. The sap will run as long as these conditions prevail. A south wind threatening rain soon stops it; though if a soft snow falls instead, it will run rapidly. The sugar-maker has no use for rain; it wets his jacket, soaks his wood-pile and increases the quantity of water to be evaporated; and the water running down the trees, steeping moss and lichens on its way, and fait dug into the sap, gives a dark stain to the sugar that nothing short of chemioal means will remove. In a good “run” the sap accumulates, and the fires must be kept going at night. There is no particular fan m this when one has gathered sap all day, but the great store tubs must be emptied to make room for the next day's gathering; so after supper the one who is to boil till midnight wends his way to the works through the deepening twilight. The familiar woods look solemn and mysterious in the uncertain light. The owl takes great interest in the sugarmaker's fire at night, and perched on a tree just outside the circle of light, hoots loudly at intervals for hours. If you have two pans, and propose boiling a laige quantity of sap, you will have no leisure to speak of. You fill the

"feed tub,’ and set the faucets at the. bottom to reuse huge a stream ttecan possibly be evaporated, then you urge the. fires to the utmost. The pans bub- j ble and foam; the fragrant; steam rolls away in clouds. You see the light of other fires iq 'the distant woods where other lonely Watchers like yourself are at work, and after awhile the waning moon cornea up and her light struggles ,in among the trees. If the air is clear and still the tinkle, of the falling drops of sap can be heard at a distance of many yards, a dear melodious sound, like a single stroke on a tiny direr bell; and as the pitch varies Swan what am cording to the size oi the , bucket or depth of sap, or for some other reason, you may enjoy a unique concert, if twenty or thirty trees stand near enough together to enable you to bear them all at once. Now several drape j tall all at once, then the intervals gradually widen, then narrow again, while others chime in, jfiving rise to a sort of irregular rhythm and cadence. No one notices it in the day-time, and the distance at which it is audible at night is surprising. The only other sound is the rush of the creek in the valley for below, swollen with the tribute gathered by the sun from every snow-bank within its basin.— Good Company.