Edible Products. 



36 



[July, 1911. 



support ox teams. The running of the 

 sap will continue as long as these condi- 

 tions last, and not much longer. 



There are three principal kinds of 

 maple in the country where the 

 industry flourishes. There is the rock 

 maple, which is the true sugar maple, 

 the white maple, which is an upland 

 maple producing sap, but the sap carries 

 a small proportion of sugar, and the 

 swamp maple, the sap of which also 

 carries a small percentage of saccharine 

 matter. Years ago, before modern me- 

 thods were introduced in the maple 

 sugar and syrup business, the trees were 

 tapped in a very wasteful manner, and 

 in a manner which permanently injured 

 the trees. The farmers of those days 

 apparently had an idea that the larger 

 the hole bored in the tree the more sap 

 would flow, so they bored holes with 

 two-inch augers and nearly or quite to 

 the heart of the tree. Such a thing as 

 plugging the holes after the sap was 

 done running did not occur to them, and, 

 of course, while the holes did in many 

 cases heal over, a cavity was left in the 

 interior of the trunk which began the 

 process of decay, and many fine old rock 

 maples of great age have come to their 

 end as a result of the lack of knowledge 

 of those who tapped them for their sap. 

 As intelligence increased in connection 

 with all industries, it was known that 

 the sap which flows upward in the 

 spring passed up between the outer wood 

 of the trunk and the inner bark, and all 

 that was necessary to secure it is to bore 

 through the bark and far enough into 

 the wood to allow the spile to be driven 

 in securely. The spile is the conductor 

 of the sap from the tree to the recep- 

 tacle placed to catch it. Nowadays the 

 holes are bored with small augers or 

 bits, and not very deep, so that the 

 process of tapping trees as practised at 

 the present time injures them very little 

 or none at all. 



In the old days spiles were made of 

 wood, sometimes of pine wood with 

 holes burned through that portion 

 driven into the tree, but usually they 

 were made of the wood of the sumac, a 

 beautiful golden yellow wood, having 

 a straight grain, and through the centre, 

 no matter what the size of the branch 

 or trunk, a core or pith which was easi- 

 ly pushed out. Instead of buckets and 

 paiJs used to-day for catching the sap, 

 the old-time farmers used troughs 

 hollowed from the halved section of pop- 

 lar trees. The sap was gathered and 

 either conveyed to the farmhouse, where 

 either in the farm kitchen or in an out- 

 building, it was boiled down in open 

 kettles, or it was collected and conveyed 



to a shanty built in the sugar grove, 

 where it was boiled down, also in open 

 kettles. The sugar made by the old- 

 time farmers showed a little more 

 crystal than did that of the Indians, 

 but it was always dark, perhaps we 

 should say it was always dark of differ- 

 ent shades. The syrup was the chief 

 product manufactured. The sugar was 

 made into cakes by running it when 

 hot into cups that had been lightly 

 glazed with butter or lard. This, in 

 brief, is the sum total of the process 

 of making maple sugar and syrup in the 

 old days by the farmers of New England, 



We have mentioned the innovations 

 in the method of tapping, that is, of 

 boring trees. To-day specially made 

 metallic spiles are used which can be 

 driven in so firmly that the buckets for 

 receiving the sap can be suspended from 

 them if desirable. The same innova- 

 tions have been adopted in the manu- 

 facture of syrup from the sugar cane. 

 Instead of the open kettle of the old 

 days in Vermont sugar makers now 

 evaporate their sap in vacuum pans, 

 which is not only economical, but very 

 much more expeditious, and which 

 turns out sugar as light-coloured as the 

 lightest so-called brown sugars of the 

 sugar cane. Of course it is understood 

 that the vacuum pan is just what its 

 name implies. In it the sap is boiled in 

 a vacuum, whereby it evaporates with 

 great rapidity, and with a considerably 

 less degree of heat than is required by 

 the open kettle process. The superior- 

 ity of the vacuum pan process is indi- 

 cated by the appearance and quality of 

 the finished product. On some of the 

 sugar farms in Vermont there are many 

 thousands of trees. These trees may be 

 collected in groves standing near to- 

 gether, and they may be scattered over a 

 wide area. They may be scattered among 

 other forest trees or standing singly 

 over wide ranges of pasture or moun- 

 tains and hillsides, tor a great rock 

 maple standing alone in an open pasture 

 is never neglected by the sugar maker 

 for the very isolation of its position and 

 the consequent conditions surrounding 

 it make it always a big producer of sap. 

 On these large sugar farms there is 

 somewhere conveniently located a sugar 

 house, where are installed the vacuum 

 pans and such other apparatus as is 

 necessary in the making of the sugar. 

 The sap is collected once or twice a day, 

 according to how freely the tiees run. 

 This is determined not only by the tree 

 itself, but by the season and by the day 

 itself, for if the day continues cold, that 

 is, if there is a cold wind blowing so 

 that the sun does not melt the snow, th 



