SUGAR AND SYRUP. 3387 
PRODUCTION OF MAPLE SUGAR. 
J. G. BASS, HAMLINE, 
Mr. President and Fellow Members of the State Horticultwral Society:—Be- 
ing requested by your secretary to write a short paper on the production 
and sources of maple sugar in Minnesota, I thought perhaps I might be 
able to give a few facts that have come under my observation in the pro- 
duction of maple sugar in my thirty years experience in its manufacture in 
Minnesota, and ten.years in my native state of Vermont, where they pro- 
duce the finest flavored article found in our markets. In fact, Vermont is 
as famous for her maple sugar as the Jersey cow is for prime butter. 
When I located in Scott County, on the border of the Big Woods, the 
rock, or sugar, maple was one of the leading attractions, as it recalled 
many incidents of sugar making in my boyhood days in the Green 
Mountain state, gathering sap and wading through three feet of snow, as 
they often do when the sugarseason opens up. Boiling the sap and mak- 
ing sugar was always a pleasant task in my younger days. And now, as 
o]d as I am, if I now lived in the maple timber, I should still continue in 
the business, for there is no other sweet manufactured that has such 
a delicious flavor as the sugar and syrup produced from the sugar maple. 
In the big woods in Scott, Le Sueur and Carver counties, and, in fact, in 
many other places in the state, the sugar maples are plentiful. If the peo- 
ple living in the woods, or convenient to the sugar maple, understood 
the business, they might derive considerable benefit and also add a great. 
luxury to the family table. 
I commenced the manufacture of maple sugar in Minnesota in the 
spring of 1854, and continued it every year till 1888, and with few ex- 
ceptions, I have always found it profitable. 
The rock, or sugar, maple is regarded as the prime source of maple 
sugar; but no doubt it is well known that in northern climates all species 
of the maple yield sap containing more or !ess sugar, though it is conceded 
that no other species than the rock maple makes a fine flavored article 
such as we get from the rock maple growing on the hillsides of Vermont. 
More favorable conditions exist for a plentiful production in Vermont, 
as their climate is not as dry as ours in Minnesota. But we should not 
get discouraged, if we can’t make as much as they doin Vermont. I have 
noticed that the quantity and quality of sap vary with the situation of 
the trees, their age and size, the nature of the season and of the preced- 
ing season, the meteorological conditions and the methods of tapping. A 
summer of plentiful rain and sunshine is what furnishes the trees with 
abundant saccharine matter, causes its deposition in the vessels of the 
wood of the tree,and undoubtedly prepares the trees for a plentiful harvest 
of sugar for the subsequent spring. 
The quantity of sap obtained from different trees depends on the meth- 
od of tapping. The depth of the bore should never be more than two 
inches, as the outside of the tree contains more sap than the heart and of 
a better quality. 
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