Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1934-03-14

get tired Of boots, and want to come out and
touch the soil just as soon as the sun has
warmed 1t little. The country boy goes bare
foot just as naturally as the trees burst their
buds, which were packed and vanished over in
the fall to keep the water and the frost out
Perhaps the boy has been out digging into the
maple trees with his jack knife at any rate
he Is pretty sure to announce the discovery as
ne comes running into the house In a great
state of excitement-as If he has heard hen
cackle In the barn-with, Sap's runnin'p"
Yes, "saps runnin i'm the New England
states, In New York, Ohio Indiana, illinois, In
ract, wherever hard naples are native to the
SOIL On hundreds OF farms in those states blue
smoke, curling up into the air above the trees
In sugar bush," tells the passerby that the
sugar camp Is in operation and that here is
being produced those two finest of all native
sweets, maple sirup and maple sugar. And II
that passerby has ever known the joys of maple
sugar time, the sight of that smoke and the
smells which drift toward him from the sugar
camp Will make memories tug at his heartstrings
and 1t will be difficult for him to pass on by.
For as Charles Dudley Warner says: "In nv
day, maple sugar making used to be something
between picnicking and being shipwrecked on a
fertile island where one should save from the
wreck tubs and augers and great kettles and
PORK, and hens eggs and rye-and-Indian bread
and begin at once to lead the sweetest life in
the world. | am told that 1t is something DIFF
ferent nowadays, and that there is more desire
TO save the sap and make good, pure sugar
and sell 1t for large price, than there used
TO be, and that the old fun and pIcturesouenass
OF the business are pretty much gone. am told
that 1t is the custom to carefully collect the
sap and bring 1t to the house. where there are
built brick arches, over which II Is evaporated
In shallow pans and that pains are taken to keen
the leaves and sticks and ashes and Goals ont |
or IL; and that the sugar Is clarified; and that
In short II Is money making business In which |
there is very little fun and that the bow ia NOT
allowed to dip his paddle into the kettle of
boiling sugar and lick off the delicious slrup.
The prohibition may improve the sugar but It
is cruel to the boy"
Those words were written more than half
century ago ("Being a Boy" was first printed
In 1877 and Houghton Mlfflin and Company of
Boston got out second edition 20 years later
illustrated with photographs by Clifton John.
son, lovingly taken from the real life and heart
Of New England" which aid In preserving the
charm Of those truly good old days'). II Charles
Dudley Warner were alive today he would nnd
that In some places where maple sugar ia made
the stun and picturesqueness' are gone even
more than they were when he wrote For In
stance, In the state with which, more than any
other, we associate thoughts of maple sugar.
there's a man. known as the champion sugar
maker Of Vermont" who has devised an intricate
system of iron pipes leading from every one of
the trees In his maple grove to huge evaporators
in the sugar house. and this network Of pipes,
more than $4,000 feet In length, sends a steady
stream Of sap Into the place where II liz con-
verted into maple sirup and maple sugar
But, despite this example Of modern efficiency
applied to business rich In tradition, there stl
are sugar camps In many places where the sap
drips through "spiles" made of sumach or alder |
into wooden sap buckets (just like the ones |
made famous by President Coolidge during his 8
where 1t is collected into great
wooden tubs or barrels sleds, drawn by {
yoke of oxen team of plodding horses '
where II is boiled down In great iron or conner /
kettles; where they still hang a piece of fat B
salt pork by string from the pole over the ket-
lie 80 that 1t Is about two inches from the top a
edge to keep the sap from boiling over: and e
where they will let you dip some of the bubbling 1
Iirup out of the kettle and pour 1t on the snow n
where 1t forms almost Immediately that delicacy c
If all decacies-mape sugar wax No, not all u
If the fun and pfcturesQueness has been taken
tut of maple sugar time by modern methods and II
new-fanged notions Of efficiency In production r,
Like 80 many other items In our national diet II