1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
59 
The Covers.— The buckets should always he 
covered. This is the greatest single improve¬ 
ment yet made. It keeps out rain, snow, dirt, 
insects, and prevents the effects of heat and 
cold. The sap is not so liable to sour during the 
warm days, nor to freeze in cold nights. Keep¬ 
ing out the rain, however, is the chief thing. 
Sometimes in a sugar season, four or five inches 
of water fall, as snow or rain. This, in a 
“camp” of five hundred trees, would make 
about twenty-five barrels of water to be boiled 
away. Nor is the useless labor and expense of 
boiling this water all. The rain trickles down 
the trees, carrying with it coloring matter and 
dirt. Syrup or sugar of the first quality can 
never be made from sap and rain-water. The 
covers are made of 3 |*-inck lumber, 1 foot wide, 
ami planed on one side. 
The Arch and the Boilers (fig. 3).—Select a 
dry, level spot, near the center of the sugar or¬ 
chard or “ camp,” and, if possible, just at the foot 
of a small hill, that slopes at least three feet in 
twenty. Dig below the frost, and lay a good 
foundation of stone. On this build an “ arch” 
of hard burnt brick, laid in lime-mortar. The 
wall should be 12 or 16 inches thick as far back 
as the wood reaches, beyond this then 4 inches 
less will do. An arch of good brick and mortar, 
on a good stone foundation, with walls 16 inches 
thick, will last fifteen years with occasional re¬ 
pairs about the mouth. But if the bricks are 
laid in mud for mortar, or if the arch is not 
built upon the rock, it must be rebuilt each year. 
The wall should be 2 feet high, and, for five 
hundred trees, 15 feet long. Beyond the point 
where the wood reaches (five feet from the 
mouth), the arch should be filled in with dry 
earth to within five inches of the top. This 
throws the flame and heat all close to the back 
pan, as it passes it, and makes this boil about 
as fast as the front one. The arch has a sheet- 
iron door (not shown in the engraving, fig. 3), 
which is closed except wdien wood is put in. 
The Pans (boilers) are made of heavy Juniata 
sheet-iron, and are 7 inches deep, 3‘.| 3 feet wide, 
and usually from 6 to 8 feet long. Two sheets 
are riveted together lengthwise, and the corners 
are cut, lapped, and riveted. The edge is 
strengthened by a thick band of strap-iron, and 
four strong wire handles are attached near the 
corners (see b, fig. 3). Directly above the pans, 
and parallel with them, runs the track (d, in 
fig. 3), and on this is the car (c, fig. 3), arranged 
with crank, windlass, ropes and pulleys, to lift 
the pan from the arch a few inches, and roll it 
towards the front, away from over the fire, 
when you wish to take off syrup. Those who 
would avoid the expense of the car, divide the 
large front pan into two small ones, the front one 
3'ls x 3 feet. Then they dip out, with a flat-edged 
dipper, all the syrup but a 
pailful, when the pan is easi¬ 
ly lifted off by two men, and 
the syrup poured from one 
corner. These broad, shal¬ 
low pans evaporate the sap 
fully twice as fast as the old 
kettles used to do, even when 
they were set in an arch. 
Kettles belong to.the days of 
wooden plows. Some maple 
sugar makers use the patent 
sorghum evaporators in¬ 
stead of pans; but the ordinary pan here de¬ 
scribed answers perfectly well,and only costs one- 
third as much, or about $10 for an 8-foot pan. 
The Floats and Faucets.— Quite a conven¬ 
ience is the “self-feeder” //, fig. 3, which is 
shown upon a larger scale in fig. 4 It consists 
of an ordinary wooden conducting trough 
( G , fig. 4), attached to the store-trough at A by 
a hinge. The sap enters, through the faucet B, 
at the point H ; F is a-tiu float, resting in the 
sap or syrup in the pan; G is a lever, having 
the fulcrum at L, the weight at H, and the power 
at D. This lever and the conductor together 
form a compound lever, so proportioned that 
when D rises or falls an inch, II rises or falls half 
an inch. I is a perpendicular (vertical) 
bar from the float F; at E are holes 
for the horizontal pin at D, joining it to 
the lever C. When the pin is in the 
upper hole, there cannot be more, no? 
much less, than an inch of sap in the 
boiler. At the second hole there will 
be about two inches, and so on. The 
flow of sap is regulated thus: When 
the pan is empty, the float rests on 
the bottom of the pan; the bottom of 
the faucet, near II, is half an inch from 
the conductor, at H, and the sap flows 
freely. As the sap in the pan rises, 
the float rises with it, and gradually 
lifts the conductor until the point II, 
presses against the bottom of the faucet 
and stops the flow of sap. As the sap 
in the pan boils away, the float sinks, 
and the sap flows again. The chief 
advantage of the self-feeder is that you 
can build a large fire and leave it with 
safety as long as necessary. The sap 
or syrup can never bum, and the sap 
can never overflow the pans. Those 
who have not the self-feeder, when 
leaving a large fire, must either fill 
the pans, or leave the faucets turned 
so that the sap will flow into each 
pan about as fast as it will boil away. 
In the former case, if they are gone 
too long, their sap will boil to candy, or 
burn. In the latter case, the sap will 
Overflow. A self-feeder costs about $2. 
TnE Store-troughs (e, in fig. 3), are made 
of long, wide, clear, well-seasoned 2-inch planlc 
—pine or white-wood (poplar), rabbeted and 
spiked together, and bolted horizontally at top 
and bottom with six bolts, (two at top, and four 
at bottom) having nuts to loosen or tighten, as 
the bottom and ends swell or shrink. Three 
coats of paint are needed. At least five barrels 
of storage are required for each hundred trees. 
The larger trough or troughs should be outside, 
as it keeps the bulk of the sap coolest. From 
the outer trough or troughs the sap flows 
through a wooden or tin conductor to the inner 
trough. The sap is gathered in barrels, rolled 
up nearly horizontal skids from the stone-boat 
sled, and emptied through the bung-hole into 
the outer trough. The arrangement of skids, 
Fitr. 5.—SLED FOR HAULING SAP. 
troughs, conductors, etc., is best seen in the 
picture engraving of the camp on the next page. 
The Wood-shed and Wood. —It saves half 
the time of boiling to have the wood prepared 
and housed during the dry weather of the pre¬ 
vious September or October. With green or 
wet wood you may succeed, with a good 15-foot 
arch, in evaporating a barrel to the hour. But 
with good dry wood, and far less labor, you 
can evaporate more than two barrels to the 
Fig. 3.— INTERIOR OF SUGAR HOUSE, WITH «CH AND BOILERS. —(Scale 8 feet to 1 inch.) 
A, Arch ; b, b, Boilers or Pans ; c, c, Car, hooked to front pan, ready to lift it; (l, d, Track ; e, Store-trough; /,/, Conductors, 
with Self-feeding Attachment; g , g. Conductor from outer Store-trough; h, Outside Store-trough; i, i. Ventilator ; k, lc, Iron Supports 
for the wood, best made of rail-road iron, set three feet apart. 
