A history of Vermont's maple sugar industry

by Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association

The ever increasing demand for pure, genuine, first class maple goods at a high price as compared to other sugars has led to the making and placing upon the market numerous imitations of our maple product, in which the poorer grade of maple sugar is used as a flavoring. These goods often bear fraudulent labels in which it is represented that they were manufactured in Vermont, though with the exception of a few pounds used as flavoring, the stuff manufactured of glucose and other compounds, never saw a maple tree in Vermont or any other state.

This is the article placed upon the market in January and February, marked “Vermont New Maple Sugar”. You may ask, how may we get this best grade of maple sugar and be sure of its purity and quality. By corresponding with any member of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association, whose names appear at the back of this booklet. Get your goods direct from the producers.

MAPLE SWEETS AND HOW TO GET THE PURE GOODS.

If Vermont is noted as being the home of any industry, that industry is the production of maple sugar and syrup, and in this booklet we will tell you something of the process of manufacture and of whom you can procure this delicious luxury in all its purity.

The producer must first have a grove of maple trees of the sugar maple variety. These groves Vermont has in abundance. They are on the hillside and in the valley; yet a grove of sugar maples that can be utilized for sugar making cannot be produced in a few years, as the tree is comparatively of slow growth and lives to a good old age. Not many trees are used for sugar making until they are 40 years old, and have a diameter of a foot or more. These are called second growth. Then there are others, two, three or even four feet in diameter; sturdy old trees that have withstood the storms of many winters. Some of the trees used for sugar making purposes have been growing since the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620.

Along in March of each year, the farmer begins to watch the weather for signs of spring and conditions favorable to a flow of sap. It can only be obtained for a period of a few weeks in the spring, and on certain days when the weather conditions are favorable. Snow usually lays on the ground when the sugarmaker begins his operations in the sugar camp. The first step is to break roads in the soft and thawing snow, so that the teams can get about and gather the sap. This breaking roads is often no light task as the snow oftentimes has icy crusts beneath the surface. After the oxen or horses have been over the road several times and they have become somewhat passable, the buckets are distributed one or two to a tree and the sugar maker goes about his grove tapping them by boring a hole with a bit three-eighths to one-half inch in diameter and two or three feet from the ground as the snow will permit; in this hole he drives a spout that conveys the sap to the bucket, and on which the bucket usually hangs.

TAPPING THE GROVE.

When the sugar maker has finished tapping his trees he is ready for a flow of sap. Sometimes it comes at once and then again the weather may turn suddenly cold and for a week or ten days there is nothing doing in the sugar camp; meantime he can get his boiling apparatus in readiness and perhaps get a little more wood.

But spring will come sooner or later and there is bound to be a rush of sap. Then comes the busy time in the camp; the men and boys gather the sap with oxen and horses. This is usually done with a tank holding from 20 to 40 pails on a sled and drawn to the sugar house and stored in tanks from which in turn it flows to the boiling pan or evaporator; the flow from the storage tank being regulated by feeders which keeps the boiling sap in the evaporator constantly at the same level. The sap as it boils passes from one compartment to another becoming more dense and sweeter until it reaches the syruping off pan, where it is drawn off in the form of syrup. The right density can be determined by a thermometer or the skilled operator can tell by the way the syrup “leather aprons” from the edge of the dipper. If the thermometer is used a temperature of 219° F. will give a syrup that will weigh eleven pounds to the gallon net. It must be remembered, however, that the thermometers are graduated at the sea level, and as the altitude increases a lower temperature will give the same result on account of the reduced air pressure. An allowance of 1° for every 500 feet rise has been found to be about right; thus at an altitude of 1,000 feet a boiling temperature of 217°F. will give the 11 pounds syrup. Syrup is not however usually brought to the required density in the evaporating pan but is drawn off a little less than 11 pounds net, and brought to a uniform standard in larger quantities than would be possible in the evaporating pan. The fire under the boiling sap should be quick and hot, as the sooner it is reduced to syrup after it runs from the tree the better the product. As the sap begins to boil a scum of bubbles rises to the top, which must be constantly removed with a skimmer, and the man who tends the fires, skims the sap and draws off the syrup has a busy job.