CHAPTER ELEVEN 



Planning Side-Line Produce 



WHEN we set out the new orchard we dedi- 

 cated a space to sugar maples. They are set twenty 

 feet each way, even though the productivity of a 

 sugar tree is in direct ratio to the spread of its 'top 

 hamper. Sugar maples are perhaps the world's 

 slowest growing tree; by the time these are of 

 productive size storm and disease will have thinned 

 them out. By that time, too, we will be, if not 

 pushing up the daisies, tottering along with one 

 foot in the grave. One may therefore ask: Why 

 plant them? Well ... of all human foodstuffs 

 sugar is the hardest to produce in the temperate 

 zone. Perhaps those who come after us may find 

 it still harder. Meantime some thoughtful genius 

 may devise a simple and practical contraption for 

 home extraction of corn syrup. And while we wait, 

 we yet have maple sugar. 



Maple sugar is one of those things the truth 

 of which is kept hidden in the forestry text books. 

 Save the above-mentioned saplings there is not a 

 sugar maple on Medlock Farm. That is no bar to 

 having maple syrup and sugar, for the truth is 



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