Sugaring 1880s style
While it is not, this could be a Coffin boy collecting
sap for sugaring operation in Archertown in the 1950s.
Family patriarch Jerry Pease of Pease's Scenic Valley Farm in
East Orford boils sap on a wood-fired rig in the annual
tradition begun by his great grandfather and described in Toni
Pease's recent publication: Maple Sugar and Me: 150 Years of the Pease
Family Maple Sugaring in New Hampshire. (Courtesy Wes Lavin)
While the 150-year tradition of sugaring at Pease's Scenic Valley Farm
will continue in 2014 with about one-half of the 1,200 taps still
hung with buckets, the recent snowstorms will delay scenes such as
the one shown in this 2012 "early spring" photograph. (Courtesy Wes Lavin)
Spring of 2014 is much different from 2012 with deep snow and cooler temperatures
delaying the beginning of the sugaring season. Wes Lavin returned to the Pease's sugar house
to take this photo.
Using oxen, sap is gathered at the Chandler Pond Farm in South Wheelock, VT. This 600-acre family farm is operated by my nephew Rob Martin and his wife Tamara using organic practices.
“In the maple groves of Warren, and on all the hill-sides around the quiet valley, sugar fires were smoking, for it was charming sugar weather; bland and sunny overhead, frosty under foot, the sap racing up from the roots every morning and running back at night for fear of a freeze.”
William Little, History of Warren, 1870
It’s time for
making maple. Area sugar makers are participating in a tradition that reaches
back hundreds of years. Many local sugar makers in both Vermont and New
Hampshire will host open houses during the weekend of March 22-23. Guests will
be treated to a taste of maple and a sample of the hard work that it takes to
make it.
This column
repeats stories about this tradition, familiar to many, new to some. The
sources are Maple Sugar: From Sap to
Syrup by Tim Herd, articles from earlier editions of this newspaper, local
town histories, websites devoted to the maple industry and interviews with
local producers.
I first read
the Native American legend of the origin of maple syrup from the side of a
1950s gallon syrup can. It was one of the various legends passed down from
native peoples of eastern North America. One says the Creator (called by
different names by different tribes) gave the people the sweetness of the maple
tree. Lest they get fat and lazy if the gift came too often and was too pure,
the maple sap was only useful during a short time of the year and required
considerable work to obtain. Another legend tells of its accidental discovery
when a native woman cooked a piece of venison in the maple sap.
Whether gained
by gift or accident, Native Americans were well aware of the sap of the maple
tree gathered during the “Maple Moon.” They used it to sweeten food and
fermented the sap into alcohol. When
European settlers arrived the natives introduced them to this sweet harvest of spring.
Early spring
warm temperatures caused the sap of the maple to rise from the roots to nourish
new growth. Freezing temperatures reverse this process. The rapidity with which
winter transitions into spring determines the length of the sap run and varies
from year to year. The sap gathered early generally produces a milder flavored
product. The quality of the product is also determined by the methods used by
the producers.
At first,
trees were tapped using wooden spiles made from hollowed softwood twigs with
sap collected in wooden troughs. Small pieces of the sumac bush were often used
until metal spouts were invented. Gathered using shoulder yokes, the sap was
boiled down in large iron kettles hung from poles out of doors. Within several
years of the settlement of area towns, residents were following these procedures
for making maple sugar.
There is a tale
of early sugar makers in Corinth described in Zadock Thompson’s 1824 Gazetteer of Vermont. In the early spring of 1777, three men from Newbury
trekked 12 miles through the snow to the wilderness of unsettled Corinth,
becoming the first white inhabitants of the town. Each carried a heavy kettle
along with the necessary provisions to spend several weeks making maple sugar.
The authors of the 1964 History of
Corinth, Vermont refute this myth and suggest that if the sugar makers had
made that trip they would have been met by a number of well-established
settlers.
Maple sugar
had its place in the economic and political issues of the day. In the 1790s
there was a “Maple Sugar Bubble” as some national leaders hoped that it could
become an alternative to the cane sugar produced by slave labor on British
plantations in the Caribbean. It was reported that one Dutch company purchased
23,000 acres in Vermont and attempted to hire locals to make sugar. Leaders
such as Thomas Jefferson attempted to create maple groves in Virginia. Both
plans failed.
Abolitionists continued to urge the use of
maple sugar in place of cane sugar, which was “boiled down by the heat of
misery.” The 1844 Vermont Almanac urged
readers to “Stick to the maple; and so long as the maple forest stand, suffer
not your cup to be sweetened by the blood of slaves!”
Cane sugar was
expensive and many families used maple sugar as a sweetener. In 1814 it was
reported that a producer with 360 trees “could make a ton of sugar and sixty
gallons of molasses” for a profit of $325 per season. By 1818 maple sugar sold
for about half the price of imported cane sugar and did not become equal in
price until 1880. Hardened and with a long shelf life, maple sugar became a
cash crop, exported to markets in eastern cities. In the 1850s Vermont produced
over six million pounds of maple sugar annually.
Then a series
of inventions transformed sugar making.
Metal sap spouts and evaporating pans were patented. The shallower
flat-bottomed pans offered quicker evaporation and higher quality control. In 1875 metal sap buckets with lids began to
replace wooden buckets.
In 1884 G. H. Grimm of Ohio patented the sugar
evaporator. The company became a major supplier of sugar making equipment and
in 1890 relocated to Rutland. In 1888 the Leader Evaporator Co. of Enosburg
Falls was established and became the dominant U.S. supplier of maple making
equipment.
Most maple
producers were farmers who used the downtime between seasons to tap. Often on
snowshoes they collected the sap using a drawing tub mounted on a sled pulled
by oxen or horses. The sap was then hauled to the sugarhouse and boiled down on
a wood-burning arch, using fuel harvested from the place. Having a number of
strong sons or handymen was especially helpful.
As one Lyme elder stated “the sap run does not wait for man’s
convenience.”
Until the tin syrup
can came into use in the 1860s, relatively little syrup was made as there was
no way to store it for an extended time. Once syrup could be made as a
commercial product, many farmers found it to be more profitable than sugar.
Between 1890 and 1920 the amount of sugar produced in both Vermont and New
Hampshire dropped significantly and the amount of syrup increased by over 300
percent.
The United
Opinion reported in April 1897 that the season had been more successful
than any in recent memory and “nearly forty tons of sugar and syrup have been
shipped from here.” Some of that sugar was shipped in boxes manufactured at
Page’s Box Shop in East Corinth.
One factor
that endangered the sugar maples was the demand for open fields and the ready cash
that lumber provided. While some farmers took measures to protect healthy
maples, other cut them away in areas suitable for other crops. In 1885 one
Vermonter observed, tongue in cheek, there was such a shortage of sugar maples
that producers had to turn to raspberry bushes for syrup. In 1922 Hazel Abbott
of Cabot expressed concern for the destruction of both trees and traditions in
the published poem “The Maples Not For Sale.” Storms, such as the Hurricane of
1938, damaged some sugar groves beyond restoration. Reports of the possible
impact of invasive species are among the current concerns of many sugar
makers.
The 1913 Vermont
Commissioner of Agriculture Report mentioned that Corinth producers led the
county by tapping 43,505 trees resulting in 90,685 pounds of sugar. Fairlee was
at the lower end of the county with only 2,880 trees tapped and 5,470 pounds of
sugar made.
One of the most anticipated events of the
sugaring season was the “sugaring off” party with its sugar on snow. Sometimes referred to as “leather britches,”
this treat would be served with raised donuts, pickles and warm beverages. If
held at the sugar house, it might also include hard boiled eggs, cooked in the
rolling sap of the evaporator. Some made maple sap beer from the final
run.
Both Vermont
and New Hampshire have state maple organizations. The Vermont Sugar Makers
Association, formed in 1893, is one of the nation’s oldest agricultural
organizations. The New Hampshire Maple Producers Association was organized in 1943. Both are active in helping to establish and
recognize high standards, and improved techniques in the industry. It is these
organizations that are promoting the open house weekend mentioned above. UVM’s
Proctor Maple Research Center at Underhill continues to explore new methods of
sugaring and uses for the resulting products.
After a
disappointing early spring season in 2012, New Hampshire produced 124,000
gallons in 2013. Vermont led the nation with 1,320,000 gallons. Producers face competition from other states
and Canada as well as so-called “maple-flavored” products and even fake maple
syrup. Changes in the grading system,
instituted to give consumers more helpful information, have created some
concern among more traditional producers.
Changes in the climate have also encouraged
many producers to begin sugaring before Town Meeting rather than after. Records from 1938 to 1959 written on the wall
of the Munn sugar house on Wild Hill in West Fairlee show that first runs were
later with a record last run of April 28, 1939.
Since this article was published I had a chance to review
five farm pocket notebooks rescued from the abandoned sugarhouse of the Harry
Franklin family on Indian Pond Road in Orford.
I was told that the Franklin sugarbush was the sweetest one around. The
records carefully chronicle the dates of first and last runs, the amount of
syrup “taken up” each day, the amount of time Harry spend boiling on the large
and small rigs and who came to help or just observe the process from 1957 to
1988.
Ruby Franklin, my
wife’s aunt, made what she called “boy and girl” raised donuts. The “boy” donuts were shaped like
crullers. Sons Lewis and Walter were the
most frequent helpers, but during at least one very snowy March, brother-in-law
Bill Pierson shoved through snow so deep to make paths for the the horses. The records
indicated that the amount of syrup produced varied during those years from a
low of 96 gals to a high of 207.
Several people have shared sugaring stories with me since
reading the article. One of the best
involves two boys who were gathering sap, but not fast enough for
their father who was boiling. They
apparently got the bad end of their father’s temper over their lack of
speed. “I fix father.” one of the boys
said and promptly took the gathering tub to a local brook and filled it with
new “sap” and delivered it to the sugarhouse. He didn’t divulge that youthful
prank until his father was 83 or so.
My great grandparents, Lyman Moore Tuttle Randall or Ida (Rice) Randall made and sold maple products at a roadside stand in the West River town of Newfane around 1930. My grandfather
Elroy Nelson Coffin began selling maple products from his farm in Guilford in
the 1930s, a tradition carried on by three of his children for decades. My Dad and two of his siblings each operated Vermont
roadside gift shops selling maple products along with other Vermont souvenirs. My
Aunt Florence Henry and Uncle Elroy Coffin were major syrup producers and
marketers in the Brattleboro area.
As a child I
helped my family sugar in the Archertown section of Orford. We tromped through deep snow, knocked the ice
from overflowing sap buckets and hauled the sap to the sugarhouse at our nearby
farm. I learned how to read a hydrometer
and know when it was time to draw off the finished syrup into a heavy felt
filter. My wife Carolyn also helped in her family’s sugaring on the Martin farm
in Fairlee. She says that even now just
going into the steamy interior of an operating sugar house brings back good
memories.
Since those
times sugaring has undergone major transformations. Most producers now use
plastic sap-gathering pipelines left in the woods year-round, vacuum collection
system, reverse osmosis for concentrating sugar content before boiling, sap pre-heaters
and oil-fueled evaporators.
There are many
sugar makers in our area, some of whom continue traditions established by
family members over the decades. One of the most impressive operations is the
Limlaw Family Maple Farm with its state-of-the-art operation. Located in West
Topsham it is operated by Bruce and Ruth Limlaw. They reportedly made 4,300 gallons of syrup
in 2013 and have 13,000 taps ready for 2014.
Paul and Betty
Messer of Orford’s Sunday Mountain Maple Farm have been involved since Paul
operated the FFA sugar house at Orford High School in 1956. Betty helped to
keep the fires stoked.
They operated the Sunday Mountain operation from the yard
of their home, starting first with a more traditional operation. They have
introduced many of the new techniques mentioned above, had 3,200 taps and
produced 776 gallons of syrup in 2013. Twice they have received the New
Hampshire Producers’ Carlisle Trophy for the state’s best syrup, an award given
for outstanding taste, color and clarity.
The Messers also manager the Dr. Blaisdell
Maple Museum at the North Haverhill Fair. They tell me that they have decided
to retire from sugaring and are in the process of selling their remaining supply
of syrup. When asked what advice they would give to a young person interested
in sugaring, they said “go slow and steady.”
The day I called, Paul was helping set up the operation at Thomson’s Mt.
Cube Farm and, I suspect, from what Betty said, that retirement may be only
partial.
A more
traditional operation can be found at Pease’s Scenic Valley Farm in East
Orford. Family patriarch Jerry Pease
recently told me that there are currently four generations of the family
continuing a tradition started by his great-grandfather and continued by his
grandfather and father. His wife Toni has recently published a book entitled Maple Sugar and Me: 150 Years of the Pease
Family Maple Sugaring in New Hampshire. Jerry said they have about 1,200
taps, with half still hung with buckets and produced 175 gallons of syrup and a
small amount of sugar. They boil on a wood-fired arch in a sugarhouse hung with
antique tools. He admitted that, at 82, he has had to give up the heavy work,
but does, with some pride, hold “a heavy-looking on, advice-giving, story-telling
role.”
I am proud to
say that no artificial “maple” syrup has ever adorned my table. Like many, I
prefer the stronger flavor of what use to be called “Grade B.” When my
daughters were young, we had a small backyard operation for a couple of years
using an old wood-burning end stove. The limited product was not high grade,
but could not have been sweeter. So, I am sure, are the memories of anyone who
had the luck to participate in this “sweet good-bye” to winter.