The sugar-maker's forest is variously called a grove, orchard, place, works and bush, the last being in many sections the colloquial term. The groves are of all sorts and sizes. The small boy taps the roadside maple in the spring-time and hangs an empty tin pail on a rusty nail to catch the slowly dropping sap ; and the great Adirondack camp, with its railroad system winding among its 40,000 trees, does no more except on a larger scale. Some of the groves stand on level land, some on slopes, some crown ridges, some are of first-growth,—there are not many of these left,—and more are of second-growth trees. Some are nearly clear maple forests, while in others are mingled with the maples such trees as the birches, beech, basswood, spruce and hemlock.
The ideal sugar grove contains the largest number of trees to a given area consistent with a full development of the top, a reserve of smaller growth, however, coming on to replace the failing or fallen maple monarchs. Its soil is well covered with a humus layer, a litter of leaves, grass less and weedless. It is not the number of trees that is important, but the amount and vigor of the foliage; the spread of the tree rather than its trunk, for the leaves are the sugar factories and the sunlight their source of power. The chlorophyll or green coloring matter of the leaf under the influence of the sunlight welds the car bonic acid gas of the air and the water of the sap into starch, which is stored throughout the tree, the next spring to pass as sugar in the sap to the buds for the building of the new leaf structure as well as for the making of the new wood. A small leaf area or one that is so crowded in a dense growth as to be but poorly exposed to the sunlight cannot lay np much starch, and lack of starch means lack of sugar. The thick humus layer on the forest floor is only second in importance to the foliage expanse, for it is the water reservoir of the forest. Indeed, so vitally essential is this soil cover of leaf-mold to the well-being of the industry that many sugar makers think that the forest trees yield more sugar than do those in the open and exposed on every side. Careful experiments, however, indicate that the sap yields, other things being equal, bear a direct relation to the size and exposure of O.: tree-top.
Maple-sugar weather.
Ideal sugar weather is met in the late winter or very early spring, when it begins to warm up, when the days are sunny and the nights still frosty. The gradual northern spring in which the ground yields up its frost but slowly is more likely to provoke the repeated sari-flows, which make a suc cessful season, than the more frostless seasons of more southern latitudes. Whatever the real cause
of sap-flow, temperature fluctuations from points below to those above the freezing point, slight though they may be, excite the gas tension in the wood-cells if they occur before the leaf-buds get well started. After that yearly episode in the life of the tree, little or no sap flows, whatever the vagaries of the thermometer.
If at this time the tree-trunk is tapped with an auger, an inch or two in depth, preferably on the south side, and a sap-spout driven into the hole, the sap flows. Convenience and economy alike dictate tapping at breast height. The flow is erratic, often exasperatingly so. It may run for some time fairly continuously, but commonly the flow is broken up into several distinct periods, or "runs" as they are called, until the over-warm weather of advancing spring swells the leaf-buds and the "season" is over. Sap runs in the daytime, rarely at night, and to any extent only on good sap days.
The sap.
The sap as it first flows is crystal clear and faintly sweet, carrying not only sugar but also minute quantities of mineral matters, albumens and gums; as the season advances the flow lessens, the sap clouds up (owing to exterior contamination of the pail or tap), becomes slimy at times and the quality be comes impaired. Hence "first run" sugar or syrup makes the best product. While highly variable, the sap averages 3 per cent of sugar, together with some other dissolved substances that are a nui sance to the sugar-maker. The sap is all through the tree at this time, except in the dead heart-wood. It is in twig and trunk, root and branch, and wher ever the tree in tapped the wound bleeds, if the weather serves.
Gathering the sap.
The collection of the sap is no small task. Roads or paths are broken out in the snow among the trees, along which men and teams travel in gathering the sap. There are several systems in use. The shoul der yoke is common in the smaller bushes, but the gathering-tank or barrels on a bob-sled or stone boat are more often used, sometimes in conjunction with the shoulder yoke. When topography favors and the size of the plant justifies it, the pipe-line system is used, a series of open troughs, or, some times, galvanized iron pipes running through the various sections of the bush to the sugar-house or to large storage tanks. The most advanced type of gathering device is employed in a large Adiron dack camp, tapping, doubtless, the largest number of trees under any one management, where a train of tank cars runs on a narrow-gage railway wind ing among the trees, past storage-tank stations to which pipe lines lead from several sections of the forest.