Life in Canada

by Thomas Conant

Maple sugar making—The Indian method—“Sugaring-off”—The toothsome “wax”—A yearly season of pleasure.

One of the familiar proceedings of the days of early spring in the long ago time, when the pioneers were busy with clearing the primeval forests of Ontario, was the maple sugar making. In our oldest settled parts of Ontario this is, of course, among the things that have been, simply because most of the maples have been ruthlessly slaughtered. On our good lands in Ontario the cleared fields pay better than maple orchards, our farmers have thought, and, much as we now regret the fact, still it is a fact that over most of our province the groves have been destroyed. Most of our youngsters have never experienced the delights of a sugaring-off, and many of our Old World citizens never yet tasted the nectar in its forest purity. Hence I infer that this chapter may give information and pleasure to many readers.

The Jesuit Fathers, who were the first white men in this country among the Indians, tell us that the Indians made sugar regularly every spring by tapping the sugar maple. At this time the Indians did not have iron kettles for boiling the maple sap in. It became a curious question how they did manage to boil down the succulent juice without a kettle to boil it in. They tapped the trees with their tomahawks, and inserted a spile in the incision to conduct the sap from the tree to their vessel beneath. Their spile was a piece of dry pine or cedar wood, grooved on its upper side for the sap to flow down. No doubt this process was extremely crude; still, with all its crudities, they succeeded in producing a considerable quantity of sugar each spring. Their buckets were made by taking a roll of birch bark and sewing up the ends with deer sinews or roots. Thus they got a vessel capable of holding a pailful, and no doubt the sap caught in such vessels was just as sweet as that which we now gather in our bright tin pails, at far greater expense and trouble. Gathering the sap from the birchen buckets, it was carried by the original red man to the boiling place.

At this boiling place was a large caldron made of large sheets of birch bark. Beside the caldron a fire was built, and in this fire was placed a lot of stones. As soon as the stones became heated to a red heat, they were dropped into the birchen caldron, previously filled with sap. By taking out the cooled stones and putting in more hot ones, and repeating the process, even slow as it was, they got the sap to boiling. Once got to boiling, by heating the extracted stones they kept up the boiling, and so continued the process until, after a time, they got the sap boiled down, and sugar was the result.

That was making sugar without the aid of a kettle, and no doubt many will almost doubt the accuracy of the statement. It is a positive fact, however, for my forefathers, who came to this province in the last century, have handed down in family tradition the story of the process just as I have narrated it. Indeed they were eye-witnesses of the process themselves. With the advent of settlers, of course, the Indian soon learned better, and traded his furs with the fur dealer for iron kettles, and then began making sugar much as the white man does to-day.

As to the cleanliness of the Indian method, it is hardly necessary to speak. One can just fancy as to what amount of cinders would be conveyed by the stones drawn from the fire repeatedly and placed into the boiling syrup. Yet with cinders and all a sweetness was found at the bottom, and no doubt the Indian enjoyed his sugar, with all its cinders and ashes, quite as much as we do to-day with all our methods of cleanliness. It used to be an old saying that every one must eat his peck of dirt before he died. Granting the truth of the old saying, then, our Indian brother certainly got his peck of that commodity before half his ordinary life would be spent; and yet the Indian, with all his crudeness, taught the first white settlers to love the toothsome sweet, and to him we owe our knowledge of maple sugar.

The sugar maple is the emblematic maple of our country, whose leaves we couple with the beaver to form our national escutcheon. Its timber is the most valuable for firewood of any in our country, and equally as valuable for many purposes when made into lumber. Waggon axles have been formerly made from its wood. It is the cleanest, prettiest tree among our forests, and the most sought for as a shade-tree, but, being a slow grower, is many times crowded out by trees of swifter growth. It is the tree of Canada in a word, and added to its qualities, as before spoken of, it produces a succulent sap, whose flavor is peculiar to the maple and to the maple alone. Scientists, who imitate nature with their compounds, have utterly failed in producing, by all their mixtures and compounds, a flavor of the genuine maple. Honey can be counterfeited, but maple sugar never. Just what the peculiar charm is about the sweet produced by this incomparable tree one cannot describe in words. It has only to be indulged in to be appreciated. Among all the sweets its sweet is the most delicate and pleasing, and we doubt if ambrosial nectar, supposed to be prepared by the ancients for the immortal gods, began to equal it. So the gods of the ancients would have had a better time of it had they been among the North American settlers, than around and about the Ægean.

Only in North America is the sugar maple found. To cause the sap to flow freely it is necessary to have nights of frost, followed by days of sunshine. March is generally the month giving these conditions, and at that time in the remaining maple orchards in Canada our citizens will be found boiling down this incomparable sweet. Great as has been the decimation of our sugar orchards, yet there are many still found in our province, and the writer advises all those who have not yet tasted the nectar to make an effort to get to a genuine “sugaring-off” and indulge for the nonce in this experience, the memory of which a lifetime cannot obliterate. I will describe a sugaring-off as well as I can, that others not conversant with it may in a measure realize its charms. The trees are now tapped by boring a shallow auger hole just through the bark of the maple. Below the auger hole a tin spile or spout is inserted by driving the sharp end of the rounded tin into the bark. Below the spile is placed a bucket made of cedar, by those possessing such buckets. There are cedar buckets now in use, made sixty years ago, among some of the older settlers, and owing to the peculiar lasting qualities of cedar, are as sound to-day as when first made. Others, as before spoken of, use tin pails or pans, but old sugar-makers aver that the sugar tastes best when caught in the cedar buckets. A shallow sheet-iron pan set over a stove range receives the sap, and in this the boiling is done. The fire, by passing along the arch, thus heats the extended surface of the pan, and the sap is thus boiled or evaporated far faster than it is in the ordinary process by boiling in a kettle. After the sap has been evaporated down to the consistency of syrup it is then taken out of the evaporating pan and placed in the sugaring-off kettle. Up to this time in the process the expectant and waiting sugar eaters have not indulged in the boiling nectar. Reducing the syrup by boiling it down in the kettle is the interesting process. Soon the surface of the sugar presents a yeasty appearance, and it begins to rise and fall in globules. Now is the time for careful watching to see that the mass does not burn; and for fear that it may run over, a piece of fat pork has been thrown into the boiling mass. This has the effect of keeping the boiling syrup within the bounds of the kettle sides, and when this piece of pork is extracted it is about the sweetest piece one ever tasted.

Wooden spoons, if no better ones are on hand, will have been whittled out by some handy whittler. The liquid is taken out into small vessels for individual use, and gradually stirred and cooled. And you taste. It is positively irresistible. And you taste again, and another taste is in order; charming is perhaps the only word which expresses the pleasure of partaking of this more than toothsome tit-bit. Positively there is nothing else in nature to compare with it, and just what the charm is no one can exactly say, only it is the peculiar maple flavor which maple alone, of all things in the world, gives, which causes one to keep on tasting, even to running a serious risk of tasting and partaking too frequently for the dimensions of an ordinary stomach.

When it will “blow” is the next interesting point in the process. The sugar maker inserts a piece of a small bent twig into the mass, and blows upon the syrup adhering to the twig. If it comes off in flakes or bubbles, then it’s done, and the kettle is swung off from the fire that it may not be burnt.