356 Percy Wells Bidwell 



The season, as marked off in the annual editions of the Old Farmer's 

 Almanack,^ was from the end of February until the beginning of 

 April, a period when other outdoor operations were at a standstill. 

 The apparatus required was simple and inexpensive, consisting merely 

 of wooden troughs and buckets and iron kettles. The farmer and 

 his sons collected the sap and the women of the family attended 

 to the process of boiling or "sugaring-off," as it was called. With 

 an average product of five pounds of sugar from each maple tree- 

 it was not difficult to obtain in this way the whole annual supply 

 of a family. Although generally of a poorer quality than the cane 

 sugar from the West Indies which was used in the coast towns, yet 

 when sufficient care was taken, a fine-grained, clear product could 

 be obtained.^ Another substitute for the cane sugar was the honey 

 obtained from the hives of bees which were considered an important 

 adjunct of every well-managed farm.'* Although a single hive would 

 yield from 30 to 40 pounds of honey, besides five or six pounds of 

 wax, yet this was a much less important product than the maple 

 sugar, principally because of the amount of attention which the 

 bees required in the early summer, when the farmer was most busy 

 with other operations.'^ 



The articles of diet which the farmers used and which they could 

 not produce were salt, tea and coffee, molasses and rum. The first 

 of these was, of course, absolutely necessary, and consequently it 

 formed one of the most important articles in internal trade. Molasses 

 was another substitute for sugar, and the rum which was distilled 

 from it either in New England or in the West Indies, was a beverage 

 rivaling cider in its popularity. It was a favorite tavern tipple and 

 in some of the more accessible towns it was supplied to farm laborers 

 in the hay-fields." Tea and coffee seem to have been coming into 

 general use throughout New England at this time. D wight says: 



1 Kittredge. The Old Farmer and his Almanack, pp. 121-123. 



'^ Coxe, View, pp. 681-682. Coxe believed thoroughly in the importance of 

 the maple sugar industry and in the possibility of obtaining the whole domestic 

 supply from this source. Dwight claims to have known a single tree to yield 

 fourteen pounds of sugar in a season. Of the quality of the product he says: 

 "I have seen the grain of this sugar as large and fine as that of the best Mus- 

 covado." Travels, I. pp. 15-16. 



^Belknap, History of New Hampshire, III. 113-116, gives a detailed descrip- 

 tion of the process of making maple sugar as observed in New Hampshire. 



* See Notes on Farming, p. 38. 



6 Mass. Agric. Soc. Papers, II., 1807, 40-41. 



® See advertisement in the Windham (Conn.) Herald, June 3, 1806. 



