MAPLE SUGAR and MAPLE SYRUP: are made from the sap of several varieties of the maple tree, native to the northern United States and Canada. The three chief varieties are the Hock Maple, which contains the largest percentage of sugar in the sap; the Hard Maple and the Soft Maple, the last-named containing the least.
The sap is collected by "tapping" the trees about three feet from the ground. The tap hole is bored about an inch deep with a three-eighth inch bit; the spout is driven into this, and a covered tin sap-bucket is hung on the spout. It is the wood imme diately under the bark which gives the sap—the largest amount coming from the ring made by the growth of the tree during the preceding year.
The gathering season commences in the spring, generally during the month of March, just as the winter is breaking up and the general rule is thawing days and freezing nights. It ends when the trees begin to bud, as at that time the sap under goes a change and the sugar content decreases.
The percentage of sugar varies from 1% to 4%, being affected by many circum stances—the variety of the tree, its location, the character of the soil, climate, etc. There are usually three or four "runs" during a good season and the first is generally the sweetest, averaging then from 3% to 4% of sugar. Each succeeding run is gener ally less sweet and in consequence the product is of a darker color because of the longer boiling required.
The quantity of sap depends to a great extent on the growth of the tree during the preceding summer and upon the weather conditions during the tapping season. Under good conditions, a tree large enough for two spouts will yield enough to pro duce three or four quarts of syrup or six or seven pounds of sugar.
After its receipt at the sugar-house, the sap is evaporated in sap-pans and syrup pans to a syrup. For Maple Syrup, this product is strained, filtered and clarified by the addition of milk, cream or egg white and is then ready for the market.
Maple Sugar is made by condensing the syrup until of the proper consistence. It is then stirred and "grained" and poured into molds or tin pails and allowed to cool.
The evaporators vary in size according to local requirements—a machine two feet wide by eight feet long will handle the sap from three hundred trees. The largest made is six feet wide and twenty-four feet long, and will boil the sap from four thousand trees. The average Vermont sugar camp has from twelve to fifteen hundred.
Maple Sugar making now and Maple Sugar making as it used to be, are very dif ferent things—what the industry has gained in facility, it has lost in picturesqueness. The old style camp with its primitive ap pliances is no more. The kettle was long ago superseded by the "pan" and the latter again by the evaporator, and the trough has become a mass of crumbling decay. The women
and children are kept at home and no longer know the old-time delights of "sugaring off," though in the Arcadia of the past their services were not despised and the whole household set up its abode in the woods.
The sap was collected then in troughs, each about three feet long, hollowed out of sections of poplars, and was conveyed to the kettles in barrels, from which it was transferred by scoops.
There were five or more kettles, from ten to thirty gallons in capacity, and each was filled with sap and kept at the boiling point, the larger kettles being filled from the smaller as evapora tion reduced the contents. When the sap was sufficiently reduced, the hot syrup was dipped out and passed through a flannel strainer into uncovered tubs, from which it was again poured into a large, thick-bottomed kettle for the process of "sugaring off," some milk and the whites of several eggs being added to it. Thus prepared, it was placed over a slow fire, and kept below the boiling point until the sediment and all foreign matter had floated to the top and been removed, becoming temptingly translucent. It was then exposed to a greater heat and gently boiled, the evaporation gradually bringing it to the point of granulation. Then the sugar-maker became all watchfulness, and it fared ill with those who distracted him, for if the golden liquid seething in the kettle boiled the least bit too much, it would become too dry, and if it boiled too little, it would be "soggy." He tested it constantly, plucking threads of it from his stirring-stick, and trailing them around in cups of cold water. While the threads yielded waxily to the touch, the sugar was not yet ripe ; but as soon as one broke crisp between his fingers, the moment had come to take the kettle off the fire. As the sugar cooled, it crystallized round the sides, and gradually the whole mass, under a vigorous stirring, became granular.
In that way was Maple Sugar made years ago and when the sap flowed profusely the operations were continued through the night and the fires cast strange shadows in the woods. But to-day everything is "improved." In place of the hut of logs is a permanent sugar-house, furnished with many elaborate devices to prevent waste and deterioration. The sap collections are made with letter-collection regularity and if the grove is on a hill and the sugar-house is in a hollow, the sap, as it is gathered, is emptied into a "flume," down which it flows into a large reservoir within the build ing. A scoop or ladle is as anachronistic as a javelin ! See Color Page opposite 368.