When the Spring RunStarts 
in the Sugar Bush 
THE OPERATION OF 
MAKING MAPLE SIRUP 
AND SUGAR-A SIMPLE 
PLANT, REASONABLE 
CARE, WORK AT A 
SLACK TIME OF THE 
YEAR AND PLEASURE 
ILLIMITABLE—A PRO¬ 
CESS THAT HAS DE¬ 
LIGHTS AND PROFITS 
COMBINED 
BY 
William A. Vollmer 
Photographs by Julian A. Dimock 
The Receiving Tank 
tY looked up at the gray, scudding 
clouds and seemed to sniff the air. 
“We’re due for sap weather 
pretty soon,’’ was his diagnosis. 
For a farm hand he certainly was 
uncommonly gifted, I thought. 
Perhaps his association with nature 
had preserved an elemental keen¬ 
ness of the senses that we lose in 
the cities. I had noted that he ap¬ 
peared to have a certain divination 
of seasons and times; an instinct 
seemed to tell him when fruits were 
ripe or potatoes ready to be dug. It 
was different from the accuracy of 
the cook at which I once had 
wondered, for she had straw auguries or made experimental 
probes with a fork, but he just knew, sphinx-like. 
I ceased wondering at his weather wiseness, with the image of 
maple sirup growing in mind. This prophecy, if true, would 
give me the secret of the delectable liquid that had made endur¬ 
able a bitter cold, snow-bound winter by adding relish to the 
breakfast cakes which I believe were one form of fortification 
against many forty-below mornings. And the jug was running 
low! I shivered at the thought as I crossed the dirty barnyard 
snow, and prayed that the prediction might be true. 
And the next morning saw a change. It was clear and sun¬ 
shiny and what little breeze there was came from the southwest. 
I met Ray coming home from the cow barn, rumbling an ap¬ 
proximation of melody from somewhere within him. 
“Bess give us a spotted heifer this morning. It's a good sign! 
Put on your felts and come on up to the sap bush. Looks like 
we could start getting them pails out and the trees plugged.” 
Sugar from the cane, maple sugar from maple trees—but sap 
bush sounded suspiciously like sassafras tea. The process was 
still to be learned. 
The sap brush was a stand of big straight maple on a hill back 
of the place. Most of the trees stood on the south slope, but the 
growth was thick up to the ridge and ran over upon the north 
declivity. In summer it was a shady forest, thick with leaf- 
mold under foot and a dense undergrowth of seedling trees and 
wood plants, spotted with occasional splashes of sunlight. A 
cool and quiet retreat that bore a look of studied wildness as 
though its condition were man regulated. And it was. 
The straight tree trunks, now bare of twigs beneath their 
branching crowns, were like squads of wood warriors at parade 
inspection, each detachment separated by a lane of snow. As 
we got into the woods I found this due to a regular system of 
roads and crossroads, not particularly noticeable in summer, but 
now the highways leading to a broad shack set close against the 
hillside. One roadway ran straight by the back of this cabin 
almost level with its roof, and all the intersecting branches 
seemed to converge upon it, for here, I learned, the sap boiling 
was done. 
“Guess you’ve got to help open camp,” was Ray’s order as he 
fumbled with a rusty lock; and I was enrolled for the season. 
Within the boiling house I was introduced to the evaporator, 
really a great pan four by sixteen feet in dimensions, fixed above 
a furnace or fire-pot of brick and masonry, the pan bridging 
over the two side walls which connected with a tall chimney at 
one end. There was a door equipped with a damper closing the 
front. The evaporator pan itself had a corrugated bottom and 
was divided into a number of similar connecting compartments 
by a sequence of partitions. If you soldered together half a 
dozen tin boxes such as wafers come in, you would have an 
approximation of what it looked like. Everywhere about the room 
were tin pails stacked in tall columns or stowed on shelves. 
From a closed box Ray unearthed a quantity of what he called 
“spouts” — metal cylinders about two and a half inches long, 
but of very small bore. Each had a little metal drip at one end 
and a little projection on the upper surface about an inch from the 
other end that was to hold the pail. The ordinary pipe stem if 
notched—to keep the pail from slipping—near the end driven 
into the tree would make a working but not advisable model. 
We spent much of the day cleaning out the pails, boiling the 
spouts and then set out to “plug” the trees. 
