Maple Sugar Days

       In the early days of the United States a visitor to Thomas Jefferson's Virginia plantation, wrote home, "Mr. Jefferson uses no other sugar in his family than that which is obtained from the sugar maple tree. He has lately planted an orchard of maple trees on his farm in Virginia." The Indians were the first to use tree sap as a source of sugar and they sometimes tapped birch and butternut as well as maple trees. Learning from them, early settlers found an important article of food in maple sugar. Until about 1880 this sugar was the cheapest and most accessible form of sweetening in many parts of the United States; but with the cultivation of sugar beets and the reduced cost of importing and shipping cane sugar, maple sugar soon ceased to be a necessity in the United States and became, as it is now regarded, a luxury.

A old sugar house in New England.

       Perfectly "purified" maple sugar would be indistinguishable from cane or beet sugar, for pure sugar is without smell or flavor, being simply sweet. The darker sugar has more impurities and the lighter sugar less. Since maple sugar varies in color and taste according to the impurities, a certain minimum of accessory substitutes is desirable in order to impart the maple sugar flavor.

       Although there are about thirteen different species of maple trees growing in the United States, about 90 per cent of the syrup used today is made from the sugar maple (Acer saccharum ) whose home is northeastern North America. Other maple trees have a sweet sap also but few yield enough to be tapped profitably.

       These trees grow very slowly, frequently reaching an age of 300 or 400 years. Tapping, properly done, does not injure them. They are easily planted in groves and grow well in most soils but those planted on hilly land or near a cold spring yield better sap than those growing in low lands. The more uneven and rocky the soil the better the products. Thus many factors‚ location, altitude, sparseness of growth, age and vitality - influence the quality and quantity of the sap.

       As the days grow warmer and snow melts in late winter the sap in trees begins to flow upward from the roots to the branches. Cold nights, frozen ground and warm days are best for tapping. The sap that flows from the trees earliest in the season is the sweetest and purest sap, giving the lightest and best sugar. Later, as the buds begin to swell and open, the sap becomes bitter in taste and smell.

       The maple sugar season is short, January to February in some sections and March and April in others. The average length of the maple sugar season for any one locality is thirty-four days. There is still snow on the ground when the season begins in New England and sleds are used to carry the sap to the sugar houses.

       Trees are tapped by boring holes one and one-half inches deep into the trunk as the sugar-bearing sap seems to come from the outer layers of wood. Iron spouts one-half to three-quarters of an inch in diameter are inserted and a tin bucket is hung at the open end. In sunshiny weather the sap drips into the bucket at the rate of about seventy drops a minute although on cloudy days the sap runs slowly. Fair-sized trees yield about thirty gallons of sap in a season. Since there are about three ounces of sugar to a gallon of sap, four or five pounds of sugar is an average yield. Sap is boiled to 215¬∞ for syrup or 250¬∞ for sugar and 90 per cent of it is made into syrup. Pabst 

Tapping a maple tree to make syrup.