32 



are hard to keep clean. The only redeeming feature of a galvanized 

 iron bucket is that it will not rust. Many people still cling to the old 

 fashioned wooden buckets, but they tend to discolour and sour the 

 sap and injure the tree, requiring an extra spike driven into it to hold 

 the bucket. They are also difficult to keep clean and when handling 

 may fall to pieces. A painstaking maker claimed to have used for 

 40 years a set of wooden buckets and made good sugar but he took 

 the precaution of painting them inside and out every few years. New 

 wooden buckets are now a thing of the past. 



Because sap should be gathered frequently a very large bucket is 

 not necessary. From 8 to 12 quarts is the usual range the largest size 

 being necessary only for trees farthest from the house where the 

 gatherer is likely to miss occasionally. 



COVERS. 



The bucket cover is by no means a new thing but Canadian sugar 

 makers have been slow to adopt it. In sections of Vermont covers 

 have been in constant use for more than twenty years but compara- 

 tively few Canadians have seen fit to put them on. In seasons of little 

 storm during the making season covers may not be necessary but 

 after the spring of 1913, in which March was a stormy month, every 

 one will admit the value of bucket lids. One farmer with a thousand 

 trees tapped made 600 Ibs. of sugar while his neighbor running an 

 equally large plant poured out every particle of sap during the same 

 period because he had no covers. Another without covers got only 

 90 Ibs. of sugar from 290 pails of sap and storms water that should 

 if of pure sap have yielded 290 Ibs. Besides having to use three 

 times as much fuel as should have been necessary his sugar was dark, 

 poor stuff due to long boiling and washings from trees. Covers not 

 only keep out storm but also bits of bark, moss, leaves and dead insects 

 that are constantly being driven about whenever the wind is blowing. 

 Covers are made of tin and of wood; illustrations of both kinds are 

 shown at Fig. 19. The cover should not lie flat on the 

 pail but allow for an air space between the cover and the top of the 

 bucket so as to ventilate the latter and thus avoid souring the sap. 

 Makers in Quebec and Eastern Ontario who used covers in the spring 

 of 1913 paid for them several times over in the increased crop and im- 

 proved quality of the products. In certain counties of Western Ontario 

 covers have been in use for several years and most of the makers now 

 have them. These men from their comparatively small groves make 

 goods of excellent quality for which they secure very good prices. 



