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.
And now for the wax, which to many is the most toothsome part of the
whole. Many prefer the wax to the warm sugar. Then dip out some of the
hot sugar, still bubbling in the kettle, and pour it quickly upon the
nearest snow. In a moment it cools, as it melts a shallow furrow in the
snow. Now comes a sticky wax, which will effectually seal together the
upper and lower jaws of the participant if he chews lustily. But it’s so
sweet, so pure and pleasant, and it’s all so jolly, that such
experiences are always red-letter days in one’s life calendar. Pour more
syrup on the snow and more wax is the result, and the knowing ones break
off the wax in small fragments and allow it to gradually dissolve upon
the tongue. And the joke goes around about the green hand and the greedy
one, who has his jaws transfixed with the wax, and is unable to speak
for a few moments until the wax has partially dissolved.
If the warm sugar was good, yea, incomparably good, this wax is
glorious. And you eat, and chat, and eat again, and there’s no
rancidness about this maple product to cause your throat to become raw,
as it were, as all other sweets do. And so you eat on with impunity,
each one’s own individual stomach’s capacity being alone the measure as
the amount of nectar one should consume. And this is a sugaring-off.
Reader, if you have not already tried it, don’t fail to make an effort
to get to a sugaring-off, and my word for it you will never regret it.
We all deplore the loss of our previously magnificent maple orchards.
But let us guardedly preserve those now remaining to us. Without
speaking of the beauty they give to our country, they give us yearly at
this season of the year a pleasure which money cannot in any other way
purchase. Indeed, the wealth of our millionaires cannot purchase the
pleasures of a sugaring-off otherwise than by going to the maple orchard
itself.