Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1869-02-26
aeriellltnral.
Westminster Farmers Club.
Feb. TO, 1869.
MANUFACTURE OF MAPLE SUGAR.

Sb. ~ iOops
MANUFACTURE OF MAPLE SUGAR.
N. G. PIERCE, Esq.---Some may thinl
this to be subject of little Importance
thinking perhaps there can be but littl
If any improvement. Let us see. Ono
maple sugar as then manufactured, wa
very dark colored Now the question is
Can it be made white. Neat and quick
are the watchwords. First would hav,
tin buckets if necessary to buy new, bu
as most have wooden ones and do no
wish to meet the outlay it is wise to kee,
them painted, especially the inside
Paint often, using raw oil and venitiar
red. Do not attend auctions and buy
old musty buckets For spouts / prefer
the wooden spout. The bit of half inch,
boring three inches deep. think the
amount of sap drawn from the tree, de-
pends more upon the depth of the hole
than size. Now if yoursap runs through
clean spouts, into clean buckets, conveyed
in clean holders, boiled in clean appara-
tus, sufficient SO as not to need much
storage, keeping everything out of the
sap rather than to strain it to get it out,
making it into sugar the same day, (not
let your syrup stand or cool for it turns
red) and you have white sugar. 1 don't
know as have the best apparatus for
boiling. | have heater and one pan,
and can boil sap enough for 100 pounds
sugar in day.
OREsTUs F. PEcK.-I tap my trees
when it is sap day, and never would
tap unless it was good one. / use bit
and sumac spout. l consider them the
best sap spout. [ scald them in lime wa
ter when done using, to neutralize the
acid generated by the absorption of sap,
and before using run hot iron through
them which chars them, tending to purify
as well as to retard the ingress of the sap
to the wood of the spout. | prefer the
small bit to the larger because the hole
being smaller does not dry up as readily.
Have everything about your premises
new or nearly so, as you can keep them
painted, especially your buckets with raw
oil and venitian red. l boil my sap into
syrup every day, and it is best when
boiling to drive it as fast as possible and
steady, for if it occasionally cooIs down
it colors, which if we can get it into sy.
rup without becoming colored, my opin-
ion is it will remain 50. l then strain
and let it stand u to "a hours before su-
caring off Then l turn off the syrup
from the settings or sediment. In the
early part of the sugar season I put
rothing into my syrup to cleanse it. I
have tried it and can see no difference.
Later in the season, when sap runs a lit
tie white from the bucket, | use 8 eggs
to l pint of skim milk. When testing
to ascertain whether done or not (if for
caking) in raising the dipper as it runs
from it, leaving long hairs / call it done.
(lf for tub not do it near as much Re
move from the fire letting it stand, and
stir rapidly, which avoids that CLASSY ap-
pearance seen upon the outside of the
cake, in turning Immediately into the
moulds. To have nice tub sugar, enough
should be sugared off at once to fill the
tub, for if filled at two or three different
times, CLASSY coating is formed between
each layer which obstructs the draining;
when it comes warm weather. turn the
tubs bottom upward and from 100 lbs.
you can get 70 or rs lbs. of just such
sugar as this, (here Mr.. Peek presented
several specimens of sugar which was
pronounced by the club to be xxx.
Question.-Do you see any difference
in the sugar made from trees standing in
lime rock soil or where the peroxyd of
iron exists, rendering the soil of a red
cast?
Answer.-I see no difference
Ques.-What is the apparatus you use
TOR boiling?
Ans.-Two pans, two barrels each,
and one heater in one arch. NY arch
is not high enough it should be Is to
20 inches above the CRATE; my heater
heats too rapidly and runs over; it is ten
feet from mouth of arch to the heater.
| would have the arch all the way of a
depth. | think my heater increases the
boiling one-fourth. 1 can boil from
o'clock in the morning till 10 at night,
Is barrels, or % barrels in twenty-four
hours. 1 would have sugar house ar
ranged so as to draw sap from holder to
heater more clean. The best sugar wealth
er is when the thermometer runs down to
1oo at night and up to Coz to 65o in the
day.
SHUBAEL PEcK.-I have made sugar
ever since | was boy, from the five pail
kettle hung upon the crane in the old
fire place, next four or five of the same
kettles hung in the woods upon a pole i
between two LARGE lops or hv the s;do ofl