HOBBY MAPLE SYRUP PRODUCTION - OHIO STATE FACT SHEET
The
Sugar Maple ( Acer saccharum) is native only to northeast North America
including Ontario , Quebec and the Maritime provinces, the New England states
and westward through Ohio and Michigan. All of the worlds pure maple products
originate from this area.
This slow growing tree can live to many hundreds of years old. The
first tree you will see on your tour began growing at least 150 years ago,
before Canada was a country. The leaf adorns the Canadian flag and the emblem of
the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team.
M.L’Abbe` de la Porte, Le Voyageur Francais,
1749.
The heavy sap run occurs in late February, March and early April at our
location in south central Ontario. For a run to take place a 24 hour freeze-thaw
cycle must occur, ideally –5C at night and +5C and sunny during the day. The
run is sporadic during the season, often freezing up or not freezing at night
for days or weeks at a time.
If the sap has been flowing during the day and it does not freeze that
night, the run may continue all night but will end the next morning and not run
again until a solid freeze has taken place.
Each spring in late February a new 7/16 inch hole is drilled in the tree, 2 inches deep and away from old tapholes. Trees are not tapped until they reach 10 or 12 inches in diameter and have a strong, healthy crown. A Sugar Maple tree of this size is likely 50 years old. Up to 3 and occasionally 4 taps may be placed in a tree depending on its health and diameter. A “spile” is lightly driven into the hole to draw the sap from the tree and into a pail or pipeline. The term “spile” is derived from spill as in “to spill the sap from the tree”.
When proper rules are followed no harm comes to the tree as a result of tapping. The hole will seal over in a season or two.
This is the old traditional method of sap collection, still commonly in use today. The first pails used by the native North American Indians were made of birch bark. The European settlers used sturdy wooden pails, followed by tin and aluminum. Although plastic pipeline is now generally favoured over buckets, some traditionalist and many hobbyist producers still collect with buckets.
COLLECTING
MAPLE SAP WITH PLASTIC TUBING OR PIPELINE
Collecting sap from thousands of pails several times a day is a very
laborious and time consuming operation. Over the years a number of efforts have
been made to reduce this labour.
The first pipelines were wooden troughs running downhill to the sugar
shack. The idea was sound,but it was so time consuming to set up and constantly
repair the system that it was no better than pails. The troughs often leaked and
would soon be damaged by falling limbs. This system was soon abandoned.
As
tin became cheaper and more available the trough idea was briefly revived but
the same problems occurred. It was not until plastic became available after WWII
that the pipeline system of collecting sap became widely accepted. The plastic
tubing succeeds where previous methods had failed, as it is very resilient in
the sugar bush, and not affected by freezing sap.
A plastic spile is inserted into the tree in place of a metal one used for pails. A dropline connects the spile to the lateral line which runs downhill to the larger mainline. The mainline carries the sap of many lateral lines to either a low point in the sugar bush where it is collected or directly to the sugar shack. A vacuum pump may be installed at the collection point to greatly assist in sap flow.
THE LEGEND OF GLOOSKAP AND OTHER MAPLE HISTORY
AN OJIBWAY/METIS ACCOUNT OF MAPLE SUGARING
“
If they [ the Indians] are pressed by thirst, they get juice from trees and
distil a sweet and very agreeable liquid, which I have tasted several times.”
Marc Lescarbot, Histoire de la nouvelle France,
1609.
“ There is in some parts of New England a kind of tree…whose juice that weeps out of its incisions, if it be permitted slowly to exhale away the excess moisture, doth congeal into a sweet and saccharine substance, and the like was confirmed to me by the agent of the great and populous colony of Massachusetts”.
Robert Boyle, Philosophical Works ,1663
“
There is no lack of sugar in these forests. In the spring the maple-trees
contain a fluid resembling that which the canes of the island contain. The women
busy themselves in receiving it into vessels of bark, when it trickles from
these trees; they boil it, and obtain from it a fairly good sugar”
Sebastien Rasles, Lettres edifiantes et curieuses,
1724.
The
native North American Indians of the northeast were the first maple sugar
makers, deriving sugar from the maple centuries before the arrival of the
European settlers. The Algonquin called it “sinzibuckwud” ( drawn from
wood).
The Ojibway called the maple “ Ninautik” (our own tree), and the Cree name for maple sugar was “sisibaskwat”.
The Indians would gash the tree with a tomahawk and often insert a hollow
stem such as Elderberry to spill the sap from the tree and into birch bark
pails. The sap was taken to a central location where a camp was set up for the
sugaring season, and a fire burned non stop heating rocks. The sap was poured
into hollowed out logs and the hot rocks added, eventually heating the sap
enough to produce sugar.
Many Indian legends exist regarding the discovery of maple, but the most
likely scenario is what is described in the Iroquois legend of Woksis, whose
wife used the water of the maple tree dripping from a broken branch to cook with
and the meat was coated with a delicious sweet flavour.
The
sugaring season was a time of great celebration for the Indian tribes of the
area. The rigors of winter were drawing to a close as the period known as
“maple moon” began. The Iroquois, in an ancient religious festival dedicated
to the maple, would perform a special dance at the tapping of the trees, “ the
performance of which will, it is hoped, bring on warmer weather and cause the
sap to flow.”
An early Ontario settler remembered the Indians bringing their sugar to market, as described by W.L. Smith in “ The Pioneers of Old Ontario”,1923. “ A picturesque scene occurred in the spring of the year when the Indians came down from Manitoulin to sell their maple sugar. The journey was made in mackinaws,-open boats with a schooner rig; and the sugar was carried in mococks,-containers made of birch bark, each holding from twenty to thirty pounds.”
“
Into these forests, in spring, the sugar-makers plunge, carrying with them a
huge pot, a few buckets and other utensils, their axes, and a supply of food.
They erect a shanty in the neighborhood of the most numerous maple-trees, make
incisions into as many as they can visit twice a-day to collect the sap, boil it
down to the crystallizing point, and pour it into oblong brick-shaped moulds.”
James Johnston, Notes on North America, 1851.
The European settlers learned of maple sugar making from the Indians, and
at once introduced large iron kettles to boil the sap in. Maple was an integral
part of pioneer life in the northeast. An article of “ Advice to American
Farmers about to Settle in New Countries” states “ Carry with you, wherever
you go, a large kettle, in which you may make sugar in summer, and potash in
winter”.
The
Indian way of gashing the trees was seen as wasteful of sap and tree, so augers
were used to bore holes. Buckets improved and crude shelters developed into
“sugar shacks”.
In
1751 Peter Kalm wrote “ The common people in the northernmost English
colonies, as well as the French in Canada, supply themselves with a large
quantity of this sugar each year”. By the early 1800’s white (cane) sugar
from the West Indies was gaining favor. Michaux in 1812 writes “ It is made
use of, however, only in the districts where it is made, and there, only in the
country. From prejudice or taste, imported sugar is used in all the small towns,
and in the inns”.
Cane sugar continued to gain favor despite a movement that sought to
boycott the product as it was made with slave labor, which peaked during the
Civil War.
By 1885 cane sugar began to undersell maple, and maple has since become a
luxury not a staple.