A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.

Western Massachusetts, Ohio and Michigan, seem
to be the favored regions, and there ought to be
rock maples enough there to supply all their peo-
ple with sugar. There would be if all farmers did
as well proportionately as some who manufactured
in one season six thousand pounds of “stirred
sugar” from seventeen hundred trees, and _ all
this besides the molasses which drained from it.
Some makers refine it to the degree of loaf
sugar till it is as white and crystal-like as a crust
of snow. One man who described his way, said,
as they all do, that the first thing was to have
every bucket and spout and “carrier” and pan
and kettle as sweet and clean as could be. They
think it well to have covers to the sap-buckets, so
that no leaves or anything shall fall in. They boil
as soon as they can after the sap comes from the
‘trees, keep the boiling sap well skimmed and
clarify it with the whites of eggs or new milk

    
  
   
   

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It was news to us that sap things never rust,
When the season is over, all the buckets are
scalded with water, then rinsed with sap, dried,
and put away in the sap-house ; the same is done
by the iron pans used for boiling; they receive a
final washing with the sweet fluid and come out
fresh and clean the following spring. The buckets
are of pine, though people are beginning to use
tin ones holding ten and eighteen quarts, and
there is also a tin spout with a hook instead of the
wooden one.

But that immaculate whiteness is of no special
consequence unless one wishes to take a premium
at a State Fair. We can all be satisfied with the
“wax”—that delicious stage when we begin to
try the hot liquid on a piece of snow crust, and
keep tasting and trying, and trying and tasting
till we pronounce it perfect; sweetness and flavor
can no farther go; the aroma of the woods cons

 

  
  

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COLLECTING THE SAP.

stirred in; this makes a curd and all the impuri-
ties of the syrup rise with it. The whiteness is
obtained by repeating the process of stirring and
straining.

It is stir, stir, and strain, strain,
Let it settle, and do it again.

densed in substance transparent as amber, When
it is ready to “sugar off,” one man says the test is
to let fall a little from the point of a knife into
cold water; if done, it will settle at the bottom “in
a round flat drop.”

Did you know that they sometimes feed bees with
maple syrup before the flowers come? Think of it!