1860. 



NEW ENGLAND FAR]MER. 



245 



For the New England Farmer. 

 MAKING MAPLE SUGAR. 



The season for makino; maple sugar is at hand, 

 and I sec no one has written upon the subject. I 

 propose to tell your readers how it is made in old 

 Cheshire county, but in order to do it, give you a 

 history of a visit to A. & C. Smith's, Pottersville, 

 sugar works, one of the best of manufactories. 

 They have at the foot of a hill, a house 14 by 2G, 

 and a wood-house attached. They have two arches, 

 and two sheet-iron pans to each arch, one set one 

 foot higher than the other ; this is done so as to 

 draw the sap out of the upper pans with a syphon, 

 so as to change from one pan to another, and to 

 avoid dipping, which is thought to color the sap. 

 The cold sap is kept about four rods from the 

 house, in a rcsovoir, on a bank so high, as to run 

 by turning a faucet through a Avindow, to cither 

 pan as they please. Tliis saves a great deal of la- 

 bor. About 60 rods up the hill, they have another 

 lot, and a reservoir with a faucet attached, and 

 troughs made of boards, 2:^ inches by 3 inches, 

 and some 3;} by 4, to carry it to the lower lot, all 

 painted yellow. It takes two hours to carry a 

 hogshead over the line from one lot to the other. 

 They have another lot with reservoirs, painted 

 yellow, with a faucet to carry the sap in troughs, 

 27 rods, to the other branch, 20 rods from the 

 lower lot. They draw at any time, except when 

 it freezes or rains. One would suppose that snow 

 would trouble the troughs, but it is not so, being 

 painted, they will clear themselves. The crotches, 

 holding the troughs, are put up in November, and 

 taken up when the sugar season is over and piled 

 together. When the sap arrives at the lower ros- 

 ei-voir, it is strained through woolen ; they calcu- 

 late to syrup off once a day, and do not take the 

 pan off, but use snow to quell the fire. The pans 

 are washed before being filled. The syrup is 

 strained through woolen flannel, and at the end 

 of this process, if all is clean, there will be no 

 settlings. 



The syrup is done off in tin pans, from S to 12 

 pounds to a batch, on a stove, or an arch, and 

 boiled down till it will dry off in a spoon, and 

 when it has grained, it is turned out into tin cups 

 two inches square, till cooled. Some put in milk 

 and eggs to cleanse it, but if every thing is kep; 

 dean, it is worse than nothing, because it is more 

 likely to burn, and many times you have to strain 

 it to get rid of it. 



They sell their sugar at the door from ten to 

 fifteen cents a pound ; some years they have or- 

 ders for lots in molasses, and they sell from 800 

 to 1200 pounds a year of sugar. I find there is no 

 trouble in making and selling sugar, if all is kept 

 neat and clean. Maple. 



P. S. You will find the two oldest sheet-iron 

 pans here and still good ; they were built in 1838, 

 got up by Aaron Smith and John Wight, and 

 built by VVm. Norwood, of Keene, since spread 

 over New England as one of the best inventions. 



Let the Stomach have its Craving. — In the 

 diseases produced by bad food, such as scorbutic 

 dysentery and diarrhoea, the patient's stomach 

 often craves for, and digests things, some of which 

 certainly would be laid down in no dietary that 

 ever wns invented for the sick, and especially not 



for such sick. These are fruit, pickles, jams, gin- 

 gerbread, fat of ham or of bacon, suet, cheese, 

 butter, milk. These cases I have seen not by ones, 

 nor by tens, but by hundreds. And the patient's 

 stomach was right, and the book was wrong. The 

 articles craved for, in these cases, might have 

 been principally arranged under the two heads of 

 fat and vegetable acids. There is often a marked 

 difference between men and women in this matter 

 of sick feeding. Women's digestion is generally 

 slower. — Florence Kighiingale. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 TRANSPLAWTIKG COKl^r. 



Mr. Brown : — A gentleman of ray acquaintance 

 from New Hampshire, whom I met sometime dur- 

 ing the winter, interested me much by relating 

 some experiments ho had made in transplanting 

 corn, and I desired hin: to v.-rite some account of 

 them for the N. E. Farmer. To-day I received 

 from him the following paper, which I am gratified 

 to forward to you. The subject is of more espe- 

 cial importance to those who live north of us, 

 v,-here the season is shorter. But it will be obvi- 

 ous to those who cultivate sweet corn for the mar- 

 ket, and to those who wish to obtain early corn 

 for their own use two or three weeks before the 

 corn in the garden or field is fit for the table, 

 that the paper contains a suggestion of much prac- 

 tical importance. Now is the time ; who will try 

 the plan ? Yours, &c., Joseph Eeynolds. 



Mr. Editor : — I wish to say a few words to the 

 readers of your paper upon the subject of trans- 

 planting corn. In the northern parts of New 

 Hampshire and Vermont, and more especially in 

 the Canudas, the season is too short for the corn 

 crops. The deep snov/s of winter are slovv' to melt 

 away, and the winds of spring, blowing from the 

 frozen regions of the north-west, are so cold that 

 the ground cannot be safely planted, until quite 

 late in the season. This makes the corn crop late, 

 and exposes it to the early frosts of autumn, which 

 in those regions usually come in August. For 

 this reason, it often happens that the hard labor 

 of the farmer in plowing, planting, hoeing. Sec, is 

 almost lost, and his fond hopes of a full store- 

 house of golden ears of corn for the support of his 

 family and stock ai-e all blasted. It almost al- 

 ways happens that his crop is injui-ed to some de- 

 gree. 



It will be readily seen, that if corn could be so 

 cultivated that it would ripen a month earlier 

 than usual, it would be of great advantage to the 

 corn-growers of those places. I am of the opinion 

 that this can be effected by transplanting. This 

 opinion is derived from my own experience, and 

 also that of others. I was led to test the possi- 

 bility of successfully transplanting corn in the 

 summer of 1857, because the gi-ound where I 

 wished to raise sweet corn was naturally so wet, 

 and the season that year M'as so backwai'd, that I 

 knew it would not ripen if cultivated in the usual 

 way. About a month before the ground would be 

 in a suitable state for planting, I planted the corn 

 in a dry, sunny place, making the hills containing 

 four or five kernels each, a few inches apart, each 

 way. The corn came uj) and grew slowly, yet with 

 sufficient rapidity, and by the time the gi-ouncl 



