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Updated: May 19, 2025
As they rested on the wall, the old man, without noticing it, sat on the lad's hand as it lay on the wall. "It hurt," Mr. Burroughs said, "but I didn't move till he got ready to get up." It was a great pleasure to go through the old sap bush with Mr. Burroughs, for there he always lives over again the days in early spring when sugar-making was in progress.
I sympathize with that verdant Hibernian who liked sugar-making so well that he thought he should follow it the whole year.
I remember on this occasion of our last sugar bush in Minnesota, that I stood one day outside of our hut and watched the approach of a visitor a bent old man, his hair almost white, and carrying on his back a large bundle of red willow, or kinnikinick, which the Indians use for smoking. He threw down his load at the door and thus saluted us: "You have indeed perfect weather for sugar-making."
It is not necessary to describe the various occupations in which the family were engaged. One of the most amusing and not the least important, was the sugar-making from the neighbouring sugar-bush or maple grove, before the snow had disappeared from the ground. They were surprised at the large amount of sap which even a single tree gave forth.
A visit to a sugar-camp is an interesting sight to a stranger it may, perhaps, be two or three miles through the woods to where a sufficient number of maple trees may be found close enough together to render it eligible for sugar-making.
Lowell, the superintendent, we had that day the pleasure of going through a large sugar-making plant at Paia one that turns out nearly fifty thousand tons of sugar a year. We saw the cane come in from the fields in one end of the plant, and the dry, warm product being put up in bags at the other.
As the sugar-making season drew near, Jenny conceived the bold thought of making a good lump of sugar, that the "childher" might have something to "ate" with their bread during the summer. We had no sugar-kettle, but a neighbour promised to lend us his, and to give us twenty-eight troughs, on condition that we gave him half the sugar we made.
It would be a pretty attention, indeed, to carry some of the maple sugar to the principal dignitaries of Egypt. But the difficulties in arranging an excursion proved almost as great as for going to Egypt. Sugar-making could not come off until it was warm enough for the sun to set the sap stirring. On the other hand, it must be cold enough for snow, as you could only reach the woods on snow-sleds.
The sound of the flail and the fanning mill is heard in the farmers' barns no more. The power threshing machine that travels from farm to farm now does the job in a single day a few hours of pandemonium, with now and then a hand or an arm crushed in place of the days of leisurely swinging of the hickory flail. The first considerable work in spring was sugar-making, always a happy time for me.
We have cane-syrup, and also molasses and refiner's syrup, by-products of sugar-making, and in some parts of the country, local products such as honey, maple sugar and syrup, and sorghum syrup.
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