A history of Vermont's maple sugar industry

by Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association

VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP AND THE ENVIRONMENT OF MANUFACTURE.

E. Wellman Barnard, Open Ridge, Springfield, Vt.

When Vermonters congregate at some special social function when responses are expected concerning the state and its products, the speakers may be relied on to advance at least the claim of excellence for the men it sends to other states and countries to become noted factors in the land of their adoption; for its gracious women; for its pure bred Morgan horses and its far famed maple sweets. These claims are in a great measure valid and the inborn pride that vouches for them is pardonable, for of the first it is only necessary to consult municipal, state and national Blue Books to find corroborative evidence; the second are known the world around in art and song and story. The supple Morgan, elastic to the tread of his native hills, with arching neck and prancing feet, an ear for martial music, and an intelligence too often of a higher degree than his master, has enlivened the trotting and road stock of the country. It is of the last product and the environment of its manufacture we will treat. Vermont has become as justly celebrated for its fine flavored maple products, as for the silky fibre of its merino wool. For the climate and soil contribute to that end as much as do the soils and climate of Cuba and Sumatra to the delicate aroma of smoking tobacco, and it is safe to say that nowhere in the known world do these exact conditions occur to such a great degree as in the section which comprises upper New England and some portions of New York and Canada. There is probably no crop dependent upon the elements, so sensitive to and actuated by meteorological conditions as this, from the day the bud of the maple bursts forth a tiny leaf in May or June to the day of sap flowing in the March or April following. The summer’s heat is quite as essential as the winter cold, for the former makes the starchy growth to the tree that the latter converts into sugar, and while the sugar maker is blistering in his hay field in mid-summer or putting up the fires to keep out 30° below zero temperature when winter shuts him in, he knows the right forces are at work in nature’s laboratory to produce his sugar crop, and is so patient in his discontent. The sugar season may commence early in March or it may be delayed until April, all again “depends on the weather.” The old time saying “When ye ancient moon of April shall glow so shall ye maple sap in abundance flow,” often holds good, but when it sometimes happens there are two last quarters of a moon in April the sugar maker can take his choice as to which he will close the harvest.

THE CAMP AFTER A SUGAR SNOW.

As the sun advances northward from its long southern sojourn and the north and south winds lock and interlock for supremacy, the frost and fury line gradually recedes and the more direct actinic rays of the sun thaws out the hard frozen timber, the crows hold their annual matrimonial pow-wow for pairing; blue birds come and a snow crust often forms at night hard enough to hold a man if not a team. It is then the sugar maker begins to think of his annual effort.

All up-to-date plants have substantial buildings, running water and heaters for washing; use galvanized iron tanks for gathering and storage; galvanized iron or tin buckets and sap spouts and also one of the more modern evaporators. This often represents a cash outlay quite sufficient to handle some business in town and is in use only two or three weeks in the year, the rest of the time being idle unless the owner includes the making of cider apple jellies in the fall and provides himself with a copper evaporator for the purpose.

If the sugar maker has been wise he has erected his sugar house along side a bank or declivity at least 30 feet high and easy of approach so that he can handle all the sap by gravity from the gathering tank downward to the straining tank and on to the holding tanks and then into the evaporator; each being well below the other. He uses an iron arch and stack which he keeps well coated with asphalt varnish to prevent rust and in case the draft of his arch is not good uses a Fenn rotary chimney top on his stack. Of course he has an ample supply of wood fuel that has been provided a year or more in advance under an adjoining shed so that it may be very dry for a quick fire is one of the main factors of rapid evaporation so necessary for good product, and another quite as important is that the evaporator room be built for it, with a space of about 5 feet all around it, and the walls sealed close to make a hot air draft upward. He does not need to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by providing sound rock maple wood. Any timber will do if dry; old dry pine stumps are the ne plus ultra and hemlock boughs, a good second.

AT THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON; BUCKETS DRYING IN THE SUN.

The competent sugar maker has thoroughly cleansed all his apparatus when he put it up at the end of the season before, but many things will need a new scald. The buckets however, and spouts are usually ready for business if properly stored after a little dusting at short notice and this is most important and often saves the first run of sap, and here let me add, the competent sugar maker must be as alert and use as much care and forethought as the competent hay maker, who cures hay rather than “handles it”. Afterthought does not count at sugaring except for the next season, but then again scatter brains has poor memory. Our city cousin whom we gladly greet in our homes in the “good old summer time” has lost some of the joys of the round of the country season if he has not been on hand on the morning of some fine spicy day when through the brilliant mirror-like atmosphere Mount Washington looks like the Jungfrau, standing aloft in the grand circle of the green and granite mountains of New England so reminiscent of Switzerland, and robin red breast is back to his old home sending forth cheery notes of greeting to go along with the sugar maker and his big load of buckets to the sugar bush, over a road that has been shoveled or plowed or broken through the deep snows on a thawy day ready for the event and in the early morn, while the snow crust will hold up and with plenty of helpers the buckets, perhaps a thousand or more, are hung. The men who tap the trees with the wide swing bit stock and 7-16 bit, but have the experience and adeptness to quickly select new growth timber in the old tapped tree and also to secure an upright resting place for the bucket. The spout men must never chaffer the tree into the inner bark and must not injure the spout when driving it securely in. The bucket should be properly placed and kept so at all future gatherings of sap. There is some discussion pro and con as to the convenience and necessity of covers, but they save lots of trouble in stormy weather and save much good sap that otherwise would be wasted. The coming bucket will be a large one, holding more then 20 quarts, perfectly covered, well flared for ice expansion and compression, concaved on one side to fit the tree and having in the bottom a flat, sap tight, easily worked faucet that will discharge quickly all the sap into the gathering pails without disturbing the bucket. Inventors take notice. Our city friend may take a hand at gathering and note the necessity of getting the sap from tree to evaporator quickly and holding it in as low temperature as possible to prevent acids inherent to the tree circulation getting in adverse chemical action and detrimenting the product. It is a good plan to have good, clean chunks of ice on hand to keep in storage tanks although at times it will not be required because of the low temperature prevailing. The ideal sugar weather is 25° at night and 55° during the day with damp northerly winds.

Now as the sap has commenced running our guest will soon realize that the whole proposition and output depends strictly on the weather conditions. A shift of the wind; a change in temperature or humidity and especially a change of barometer pressure, which is the actual force behind a rapid flow of sap, may turn a big sap day into a complete fiasco and perhaps the often reoccurrence, a whole season, and thus the competent sugar maker with his $30 per month and board “help” and $4.00 per day teams may be quite out of pocket at the end of the season for no cause of his own, even though he obtain $1.50 per gallon for his canned syrup; but then he may charge all this up in his profit and loss account along with his products of milk and cream for the city contractor often backing up the latter with a mortgage on his farm the grain, help and imposed conditions account that the mill may go around by day and year.

MAPLE GROVE IN EARLY SPRING.

Has it ever occurred to the city consumer that the modern dairy building and apparatus so glibly demanded will cost from $3,000 to $5,000 according to locality, for a herd of 25 cows often more than the whole farm does sell for at auction after such improvement has been added. And this holds good as to the sugar output; $1,000 goes a short way for a 2,500 tree establishment and it is the many full buckets that count against short runs, rather than a smaller number with less initial expense. Moreover it should be borne in mind by the town consumer that the farm price demanded has never been exorbitant for any product and that for at least a quarter of a century has ruled so dangerously low that no other business or calling that did not have its habitation and crude food products included in the output would have stood up to it for a season; but then, there is the middleman who is often a needless or exaggerated adjunct that in many lines has become an avaricious parasite to legitimate business—but that is another story and our city friends can help us solve that after they have canvassed the situation by actual contact, and with benefit to themselves.