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Canadian Forestry Journal, March, 1917 



In the Maple Sugar Season 



An Interesting Sketch of the Sugar Maple and the Gathering 

 of Sap Since Indian Times 



By Maud Going, Author of ''Our Field and Forest Trees'', (McLurg & 



Co., Chicago. 



The sugar maple is prized for the 

 richness, as well as for the abundance 

 of its sap. While the snow is still 

 lying on the ground the tree shows 

 that spring has awakened it by the 

 ceaseless drip of its watery blood into 

 a tin pail, hung at its side. When the 

 sun warms the tree, in the middle of 

 the day, so that the sap "runs well," 

 about seventy drops fall into the pail 

 every minute. It is a slow business, 

 but it goes on every day for about 

 three weeks. By that time the tree 

 has parted with twenty-five gallons 

 or so of its life-blood. But this boils 

 down to rather less than five pounds 

 of sugar. 



As soon as the maple leaves begin 

 to unfold the sap becomes less sweet, 

 and the sugar made from it is darker 

 and has less of the peculiar maple 

 flavor, while the flow from the birch 

 stops altogether as soon as the 

 flower-chains cast off their winter 

 nightcaps and begin to lengthen. In 

 later spring, the best of the maple 

 sap, and all of the birch sap, is used 

 as fast as it rises, to nourish the wak- 

 ing flower-buds, to start young leaves 

 to life, and to help new shoots to 

 grow. 



So the sugar-maker's season is a 

 short one. It begins when spring 

 stirs among the roots, and it ends 

 when buds awaken and unfold. 



Maple sap used to be boiled down 

 in a large caldron swung gipsy-fashion 

 over an open-air fire. Warm, flicker- 

 ing lights played over the snow, the 

 lilac-gray trunks of the maple trees, 

 and the busy workers stirring the pot 

 and feeding the flames. But today, 

 on many farms, a patent evaporator 

 takes the place of the gipsy kettle, 



and a bricked-in oven does the work 

 of the leaping fire. The new way is 

 more economical — and far less pic- 

 turescfue. 



Indians Were First 



The Indians were the first makers 

 of maple sugar. Indeed, before the 

 white man came, bringing the sugar- 

 cane and the honey-bee, this was the 

 richest sweet the red man knew. It 

 came, too, when the poor Indian had 

 just gone through his hungry time, 

 the scanty fare, or perhaps the star- 

 vation, of the cold and cruel winter. 



The Iroquois used to hold a public 

 festival every spring to celebrate the 

 tapping of the maples. "It con- 

 sists," says a Government report, 

 written thirty years ago, "of a war 

 dance which will, it is hoped, bring on 

 warmer weather and cause the sap to 

 flow. At the close of the sugar season, 

 follows the maple-sugar festival, the 

 soups of which are all seasoned with 

 the new-made delicacy. This festival, 

 in which a number of dances are in- 

 troduced, lasts but one day." 



Now that cane sugar can be bought 

 so easily and cheaply, even at traders' 

 stores in the wilderness, the Indians 

 boil less sugar than they did, and some 

 of them are forgetting how to boil it 

 at all. But fifty years ago the Meno- 

 mini used to make many tons of maple 

 sugar every spring. 



Crows Gave Signal 



The sugar-boiling season was open- 

 ed by the arrival of the first crows, 

 flying back from the South. It was 

 eagerly expected, and became a holi- 

 day for everybody. Each house- 

 mother had her own sugar hut, built 



