chapter 379

3/29/2015

Maple Sugar

Olmsted sugar bush

About 1930 if Dad was 10 adjusting the sap trough to the Olmsted Sugar House to make Maple Syrup. Grandpa driving the team with wooden sled and vat. Probably wooden buckets. From the Olmsted Ledger, they sold 47 gallons of Maple Syrup in 1920 (including 5 gal to Saltsman at $1.50/gallon). Don't remember them talking much about the process (another lost archive).

Bill took pictures of the sugar shack to Aunt Carol....she remembers it well...said they called it the sap house (most people called it a sugar house).....she said grandpa would sleep up there on an old couch when boiling at night, had to reach 219 degrees before it's syrup. She's not sure if Philo built it or if it was there when he bought the farm in 1918.

The sugar shack was behind the barn part way up the hillside. There's many sawn boards up against the shack and can see some above also. We had a saw mill somewhere up there. I thought I recalled remnants toward the top of the pasture. About 20 of our dairy cows up on top. Just past the fence up top left is where we did our serious blackberry picking for sales. You can see the sled trail going diagonally up the hill toward the fence gate and the sugarbush above.

Bill took this modern day shot of the hill side since he still lives there across the street.

Googled lots of maple syrup producers in the area and went to this Sugar Oak Farms so I could also visit grandson nearby and take him someday.

The galvanized bucket is from another neighbor at the end of my road. He has mucho acres to tap and has a small evaporator just for fun.

Bob Hammer wrote back of his experience working at Tracy Short's Sap House in Virgil:

"worked a couple winter/spring seasons, Tracy and I gathering sap with buckets from trees into large container on wagon behind chained up John Deere tractor, sometimes a small John Deere cat pulling the wagon, dumping wagon at sugar boiling house, where Ed was often times working round the clock, sleeping short naps on cot, grabbing a ladle hanging by door as we come in from sweaty fun work in nights after school dipping from sap to syrup as our taste buds desired for a hot drink to finish the night....cold sunny days, starry nights bringing the sap up, dumping ice out of buckets, the freezing doing part of syrup sugar concentration for Ed....Feb/March....at end of season Ed would barrel up the syrup to ship to Vermont for tobacco or something, when tree buds come out syrup not as good, bitter, didn't want to sell to loyal customers at road side stand, about $7 per gallon in those days...Ed had alot of thermometers and densiometers constantly measuring boiling sap/syrup keeping optimal...helped him drill trees, several buckets on big trees with large branches, inserting spigots...last season he tapped a further out on farm sugar bush of maple trees and we put in his first gravity system with plastic tubing, riser pipes for air, different kind of spigots...lots of trial and error learning how to make sugar bush work itself from tree to tanks at bottom of hill/draw...Ed was great guy to work for and with...I always thought it funny to hear Vermont was leader of maple syrup, knowing NY producer was shipping his lower quality stuff to Vermont...I also worked at least one summer shoveling/hauling manure, painting farm buildings, picking stones...

sister Gini and I tapped maples at fish hatchery, boiled sap for many nights on Coleman camp stove, 40 gallons sap/1 gallon syrup, ended up going to far, making sugar rather than syrup, tricky business, and don't scorch it either...Ed was a master as I came to appreciate, not only at maple syrup, but at farming, small smallmill running, business, engineering, people...

my first technical writing paper at Syracuse was on sugar bush management...I loved whole maple experience...you asked, I run off with fond memories...

I love your photos of NY fields and forest as well, missing that hardwood/pine/field country..."

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