Maple history fans might be interested in Lanark County Kitchen: A Maple Legacy from Tree to Table, a recently published book about maple sugaring families in Lanark County, Ontario.
Written by Arlene Stafford-Wilson, this 2023 book presents a series of short and concise histories of thirteen legacy maple producers, families that have been making maple products for many generations in Lanark County. Stafford-Wilson is the author of a number of books on life and times in Lanark County, with more information on those available at her website www.staffordwilson.com.
This pocket size book (4.75” x 8.0”) spans 165 pages and covers a range of sugaring families and stories from small homegrown hobbyists to the big names in the county, such as Wheeler’s Maple with their large sugarbush, pancake restaurant, and famous maple and logging museums. The book starts off with a few brief introductory chapters presenting basic details about maple sugaring, syrup grading, and syrup judging that serve as useful contextual materials for the later chapters and histories. There are no illustrations in the book, it is only text, but each family’s chapter includes one or two maple-related recipes that were provided by those families.
Each family history is as much a record of their local genealogy as it is a recounting of the history of their maple operation, with most of the families sharing a common thread of being the descendants of Irish or Scottish immigrants that arrived in Ontario in the early to mid-1800s. Another common thread in almost all the histories in the book is a retelling of the devastating effects and subsequent recovery from a severe ice storm in 1998, as well as a derecho wind storm in 2022.
Like the well-known Wheeler’s Sugar Bush, another notable chapter covers the story of Brien and Marion Paul’s sugaring operation. The late Marion Paul is an especially notable figure in Ontario maple history as the only woman from Ontario and the only producer from Lanark County in the International Maple Hall of Fame.
It is great to see the documentation and publication that highlights local maple sugaring stories and families. The one thing that surprised me in reading the book was no mention of Claudia Smith’s book When the Sugar Bird Sings: The History of Maple Syrup in Lanark County.Admittedly, When the Sugar Bird Sings was published 25 years ago; however, it is still very much worth finding a used copy and having on the maple history shelf in one’s library. It is not common that a single county in the United States or Canada has one book written specifically on the history of maple sugaring in that area, and now Lanark County has two! Stafford-Wilson’s Lanark County Kitchen adds another layer of detail to the history of Lanark maple sugaring, especially when combined with When the Sugar Bird Sings.
Individual copies of Lanark County Kitchen: A Maple Legacy from Tree to Table cost CAD$25.00 may be ordered from the United States and Canada by contacting Arlene Stafford-Wilson directly at – lanarkcountybooks@gmail.com.
Cover page of Cook’s influential “Maple Sugar and the Sugar-House” published in 1887.
A.J. Cook’s Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush, the oldest stand-alone publication dedicated to providing advice and guidance in making maple sugar and syrup, was first published in 1887. The 44-page illustrated booklet was written by Professor Albert John Cook of the Michigan Agricultural College (today known as Michigan State University) at the behest of the booklet’s publisher, A.I. Root. Although Cook had been making maple sugar his entire life, he was better known at the time as a naturalist, entomologist, and expert on the business of keeping bees and making honey. You can download and read a copy of Cook’s booklet at this link.
Cook was born and grew up on his family’s farm near Owosso, Michigan. He attended college at the Michigan Agricultural College earning a Bachelor’s of Science degree in 1862, a Master’s of Science in 1865, and a Doctorate in Science in 1905. In 1867, he was appointed to the position of mathematics instructor at the Michigan Agricultural College before advancing to a position of professor of zoology and entomology in 1869. He also served as curator of the college’s museum and established the agricultural college’s extensive insect collection.
Portrait of Albert John Cook in the 1880s.
As an adult, Cook owned and maintained his own farm and sugarbush adjacent to the farms of his brothers Seth R. Cook and Ezekiel J. Cook which were along the banks of the Maple River in Shiawassee County, Michigan. Cook was a prolific author, and his breadth of knowledge as a naturalist and scientist along with his practical experience as a farmer positioned him well as a frequent contributor to a number of rural newspapers. It was common to see articles on new and improved methods of farming and rural living in such publications as the New York Tribune, the Rural New Yorker, Philadelphia Press, New England Homestead, and Country Gentleman. Some might even describe his association with these papers as that of a correspondent or editor.
In addition to his articles and letters of advice, he was the author of the popular Manual of Apiary in 1876, the first textbook on American beekeeping that was republished through ten editions over the following decade. He also published Birds of Michigan in 1893 and California Citrus Culture in 1913.
Cook recognized that despite the great interest in and economic importance of maple sugaring, there was next to nothing written about it to guide and assist the sugarmaker to make the best quality sugar and syrup possible. He acknowledges in the introduction to the booklet that, prior to being asked by publisher Root, he had no plans to write a comprehensive guide to maple sugaring, even though Professor Cook gave advice and direction on maple sugar making as early as 1884 in a newspaper column that appeared in a number of papers in northeastern US states. Interestingly, it wasn’t until nearly 20 years later with the U.S.D.A. publication of The Maple Sugar Industry by William F. Fox and William F. Hubbard in 1905, that another comparable guide book was published. For more information on the history of maple syrup manuals, see my earlier post.
The first edition of Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush was released in the spring of 1887. Subsequent re-printings by the publisher made the addition of three appendices, one written by A.J. Cook, one by George E. Clark, and one by the publisher A.I. Root. The booklet continued to be printed and sold by publisher Root well into the early 1900s. A.I. Root of Medina, Ohio, the booklet’s publisher, was a successful bee keeper who ran a prominent business in northern Ohio for all things related to keeping bees. Root’s bee-business activities included publishing, where he put out a wide number of booklets on bee keeping and successful farming as well as a monthly magazine called Gleanings in Bee Culture that continues to this day. In addition to an extensive business in bee-keeping supplies, Root was a maple syrup buyer and packer in his corner of Ohio south of Cleveland.
Page from Cook’s “Maple Sugar and the Sugar-Bush” illustrating the exterior and floor plan of his model sugar house.
As a naturalist and professor of entomology, it is expected that Cook’s guide book contains a substantial section on the current understanding at that time of the ecology and physiology of the maple tree as well as a discussion of the various insect pests that plague the maple species. When the text moves to the actual discussion of the sugarbush ,Cook leads off with the motto, “neatness and dispatch,” which sums up his overall advice for the secret to making money from the best possible maple sugar and syrup. He proceeds to describe his own sugarhouse and boiling set up, touting the overwhelming superiority and efficiency of a modern evaporator over a kettle or flat pan. In the 1870s, Professor Cook was an early user and proponent of the evaporator designed and patented by D.M. Cook of Marshfield, Ohio, who was of no relation. However, in time he began to see limits in the Cook design and in the mid-1880s, shifted to the improved design of the Champion Evaporator from G.H. Grimm of Hudson, Ohio.
Cook had the benefit of personal experience from a lifetime of making maple products on his father’s farm and then his own. Cook himself witnessed the evolution of sugaring firsthand in his family’s operation, going from wood pails, wood spiles, and open-air kettles, to flat pans on a stone arch in a crude log shelter to covered metal pails, metal spouts and an efficient metal evaporator in a wood frame sugarhouse.
At the time of writing the booklet, Cook was tapping 600 trees and by 1890 had grown to tapping 800 trees in his sugarbush. Cook advocated putting in one spout per tree early in the season and adding a second spout to each tree later in the season. He used only metal pails with wood covers and advised, where possible for sugarmakers to frequently rinse the pails with water during the course of the season. He was a huge proponent of maintaining the cleanest and freshest equipment possible with periodic washing of tools throughout the season, and to collect and boil the sap as quickly as possible. He also advocated for the need to maintain a tight and neat sugarhouse. As he wrote, “it is filth – sour sap, not later sap, that makes inferior syrup,” showing his early understanding of the real nature and sour of off flavors and poor-quality syrup.
Cook’s booklet goes on to share a plethora of practical explanation and advice about operation of the evaporator; wood storage and selection; sap collection, gathering, and storage, and tree tapping. In all areas of sugaring, he addresses the motto from the beginning, pointing out the reasons and methods for choosing modern metal tools and how to keep the equipment and resulting sap as clean as possible. He even advised those who were tapping a smaller number of trees to just busy themselves with making syrup for their griddle cakes and not bother taking the syrup down further to maple sugar. Cook understood that maple sugar was never going to compete with cane sugar and corn syrup as sweeteners and that the manufacturers of maple products needed to embrace the notion that they were making and selling a luxury product. In fact, instead of making sugar, Cook boiled most of his sap into syrup which he canned in metal tins and glazed ceramic jugs. He made no mention of bottling syrup in glass. He noted that he sold his syrup at $1.25 a gallon, with the equivalent volume of sugar getting 70 to 80 cents or at most $1.00 despite the additional labor and costs associated with boiling from syrup to sugar. Even though Cook was not a proponent of making maple sugar with the sap he gathered, he still provided a detailed description of the process of making what he called barrel sugar, cake sugar, and stirred sugar.
There is no indication Cook was influenced or sponsored by any particular equipment manufacturer when he chose to recommend items by name and cost. Instead, because this was an independent publication, outside his position with the State Agricultural College, he was free to share his own personal opinions and experiences, free of criticism of favoritism.
Portrait of A.J. Cook during his time as California Commissioner of Horticulture.
In 1893 Cook took on a new position as professor of biology at Pomona College in Claremont, California, a suburb of Los Angeles: leaving Michigan and his farm and sugarbush in the hands of his son, Albert Baldwin Cook. Cook later left his position at Pomona College in 1911 and moved to Sacramento when he accepted an appointment as Commissioner of Horticulture for the State of California. He continued in that role until failing health forced him to resign in 1915 and he returned to Michigan. Cook’s health never improved, and he died in Owosso, Michigan in 1916 at age 74.
Special thanks to Karl Zander for providing a digital copy of Cook’s booklet in PDF format to be shared with readers.
Book and dust jacket cover from the first printing by John Day Company in 1950. Collections of the author.
The Maple Sugar Book by Helen and Scott Nearing is arguably THE most read book on the subject of maple sugar and syrup. It has always interested me how, in its over 70 years of being in print, this book has continued to serve as such a significant guide book for entry level and hobbyists syrup makers. Even with a variety of more sophisticated and technical guides and handbooks available from state and federal agencies, often for free, The Maple Sugar Book has been as popular, or even a more popular source for how-to information than all the other technical publications.
Helen Nearing running the evaporator. Photo from article in February 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.
Tackling the topic of maple sugaring from the perspective of practitioners as opposed to researchers was no easy task and gave the Nearings a certain freedom to share what they had learned and come to believe about maple sugaring. At that time research programs in maple industry research were in their infancy as formal maple research institutions like the Proctor Maple Research Center, Cornell Maple Program, or the USDA maple program, were just getting started. Perhaps, part of the book’s enduring appeal has been the charm of its more romantic and down-home presentation, in contrast to the technical presentation of the government and university publications.
Nearing’s first sugar house at Forest Farms. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
The Nearings purchased their maple woods near Jamaica, Vermont in 1934, complete with an aging wood framed sugar house, on land adjacent to the farm they bought the year before. Soon after, they added a second new sugarhouse built of concrete with a metal roof. For their first six years, they operated the sugarbush and sugarhouse cooperatively with their neighbors Floyd and Zoe Hurd, dividing the seasons’ products on shares based on each family’s relative contribution of land, equipment, and labor that season. As an example of their cooperative model, when the new sugarhouse was put in, the Nearings paid for the construction of the building and their neighbors the Hurds, paid for a new evaporator.
Nearings’ metal pipeline for gathering and moving sap to the sugar house. Photo from article in February 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.
The Nearings ascribed to a vegan lifestyle and philosophy that was not supportive of the use of draft horses or oxen, although they did use a horse for the first couple of sugaring seasons., Likewise, they preferred to rely on trucks and tractors as little as possible. However, gathering maple sap completely by hand was heavy, difficult work, so in 1935, wanting to streamline and reduce the labor requirements of gathering and transporting sap, the Nearings began installing a metal pipeline system.
Scott Nearing screwing on a pail for a dump station along the metal sap pipeline. Photo from article in February 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.
The Nearings’ pipeline network was made of interconnected sections of one inch iron pipe that rested on the ground in a dendritic pattern. Running downhill at 100-foot intervals, it featured stand pipes or dump stations made of pails attached to the horizontal pipeline, and functioning like funnels. It would be interesting to know what was the actual cost of installation and maintenance of such a system.
For the usual division of labor within the Nearing sugarbush, Scott was primarily tasked with the woods work, such as tapping and sap gathering, whereas Helen oversaw the work in the sugarhouse such as boiling sap, bottling syrup, and making sugar and candies, as well as packaging orders and handling any marketing and sales during the rest of the year.
Helen Nearing preparing packaging for mail orders of The Maple Sugar Book in their Forest Farms home. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
Of course they could not do all the work with just the two of them and did make use of the assistance of their neighbors. Their Forest Farms operation gathered sap from as many as 4200 buckets, with 80% of their syrup grading as fancy. Their syrup did well in judging competitions, scoring as high as second in the Vermont state judging in 1950. Most years they made around 1000 gallons of syrup which earned them about $5000, with a good portion made into sugar and candies.
List of maple products available for purchase from Nearings’ Forest Farms. Collections of the author.
Through the 1940s and early 1950s, the Nearings took great advantage of the mail order trade from their Forest Farms, selling a wide variety of maple syrup and what are today called “value added products.” Everything from pure maple syrup in quart, half gallon, and gallon cans, as well as “sweet old lady” bottes, an early variation of fancy glass. They also made soft maple sugar and granulated sugar in special hand painted wooden boxes, wooden buckets, and miniature birchbark mokuks. They also offered unique maple products like nut pattie cakes, maple pennies, and maple lollipops. In addition to mail order cash sales, where possible they traded maple syrup and sugar for other harder to get goods and products they desired, such as citrus, walnuts, olive oil, or raisins from California.
Helen Nearing checking the progress of the syrup and looking for aproning. Photo from article in February 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.
Growing disillusioned with land development in their area and a proposed ski area on nearby Stratton Mountain, in 1952 the Nearings sold their Forest Farms and sugarbush to George and Jackie Breen and moved to Maine, bring an end to their maple sugaring business that was at the heart of their model and successful execution of a sustainable back to the land lifestyle.
From my perspective, the book’s contribution to documenting and sharing the history of maple syrup and sugar is unmatched and is one of the most important texts to be read for anyone interested in maple history. It still is the best source in a single volume for historical references and accounts of maple sugaring from the 18th and 19th centuries. The book is both a telling of the history of maple sugaring and itself an important piece of maple history for the impact it has made to telling the story of maple and showing people a path to making their own maple syrup. The first three chapters share the Nearing’s extensive historical research, first examining the history of the place of sugar in western culture, then sharing early the accounts of Native American sugaring, followed by tracing the evolution of maple sugar and syrup making among colonists and early settlers.
Helen Nearing reading from The Maple Sugar Book at a presentation to the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association annual dinner in 1950. Source – Burlington Free Press, February 9, 1950.
Thinking about the actual crafting of this book, I have always been impressed with the depth and breadth of the effort the Nearings went to in searching for and finding a wide range of historical accounts of maple sugaring. Although both the Nearings were systematic and scholarly in their approach to writing and even life in general, neither of them were historians in any formal sense. Yet, they wisely had a great concern for getting as close as possible to the primary sources of a particular historic account. With that they were careful to always share a reference and citation to tell the reader exactly what was stated and from where the statement came.
Although both the Nearing’s names were listed as authors, the research and writing were primarily completed by Helen, who did the majority of the writing at their Vermont home in the winter of 1946-47. However, Helen later shared “… in the end we didn’t know who had written which. Although all the erudite parts were his, and the simplistic parts were mine. But still it was a mixed, it was a mixed book. We wrote it that way together.”
Image of he Nearings’ old and new sugar houses alongside sap collection tanks. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
With her usual humility and deference to Scott, Helen later said, “we wrote The Maple Sugar Book to learn, not to show how much we know,” and, “. . . we had three things in mind when we set ourselves to write this book. The first was to describe in detail the process of maple sugaring. The second was to present some interesting aspects of maple history. The third was to relate our experiment in homesteading and making a living from maple to the larger problem faced by so many people nowadays, how should one live?” The couple collected historical material and practical advice for the book over 6 or 7 years and when they began they were surprised to discover that no one had really written such a book before them.
Helen Nearing chatting with guests at the New York City sugar on snow book release party in March 1950. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
Helen was encouraged by their neighbor, famous author Pearl S. Buck, to use an autobiographical approach and write about the Nearing’s firsthand experiences with maple sugaring. According to Nearing historian Greg Joly, with completion of a draft manuscript in 1947, the Nearing’s literary agent shared the book with a number of notable publishing houses, to no avail. Eventually the manuscript made its way to the hands of an editorial intern at John Day Company who in turn brought it to the attention of Richard J. Walsh, President of John Day Company, who also happened to be the husband of Pearl Buck, where the book finally found a home.
Scott Nearing preparing the maple syrup for the sugar on snow book release party in New York City. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
The book was initially published by John Day Company of New York in hard cover with a dust jacket and was made available for purchase on March 1, 1950, with 2500 copies printed. Released during the sugaring season, the publisher took advantage of that timing and even had a maple syrup themed book release party in New York City, featuring sugar on snow prepared for the guests by Helen and Scott Nearing, complete with donuts, pickles, and coffee. The publishers said the sugar on snow party was the first of its kind in the city. George Stufflebeam, the President of the Vermont Maple Sugar Maker’s Association at that time described the book as “the best treatise ever written on the maple industry.”
Helen Nearing fueling the wood fired evaporator at their Forest Farms sugar house. Photo from The Good Life Album of Helen and Scott Nearing (1974).
Dutiful to the expectations of their publishers, Helen and Scott made numerous speaking and promotional appearances to help sell the book, but surprisingly, in the initial year, John Day Company was able to sell only 2000 of the 2500 copies. After the initial printing by John Day Company, the rights to the book reverted to the Nearings and they subsequently printed four hard cover runs of the book under their own Social Sciences Institute label in the years 1950, 1958, 1968, 1970. Later, in 1970, the book was picked up and reprinted by Schocken Books in paperback and hardcover. Finally, in 2000 Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction, Vermont, in conjunction with the Nearing’s Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, published a commemorative 50th anniversary edition, complete with a new forward and excellent epilogue by Nearing historian Greg Joly.
Image of the book “Sugar-Bush Antiques” with original artwork on the dust jacket by East Aurora, NY artist Rix Jennings.
For collectors of maple sugaring antiques, artifacts, and material culture, there is one book that stands out as a kind of beginners’ guide and check list to the many different items one might come across and chose to collect. That guide is the book Sugar-Bush Antiques by Virginia Vidler. The book was published in 1979 by A.S. Barnes and Co. a New York based textbook and encyclopedia publisher at the time.
Sugar-Bush Antiques was Vidler’s second guide book on antiques, following on the 1976 release of American Indian Antiques: Arts and Artifacts of the Northeast, also published by A.S. Barnes. She also later published a book in 1985 on collectibles and souvenirs related to Niagara Falls.
Virginia Vidler in her element searching for sugar-bush antiques at a New York sugarbush.
Although Virginia Vidler’s name is on her books as a sole author, in reality, all of her books were a joint project of Virginia and her husband Edward Vidler. As an amateur photographer, Ed Vidler’s main contribution was in providing the many black and white and color images of artifacts, antiques, sugarhouses, and sugaring accoutrement in this well-illustrated book. Vidler asked local East Aurora and Buffalo artist and illustrator Rixford “Rix” Upham Jennings to do the color painting to provide a unique and original cover design.
Image from the frontispiece of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”
Virginia Vidler was interested in local New York and new England history and served as the historian for the Town of Aurora. Her interest in maple sugaring and sugar-bush antiques primarily came from her fascination and interest in researching and documenting history. Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son Don Vidler shared that they were not a family of maple sugar makers, although there was a great deal of sugaring in the countryside around them. According to son Don, it was common for the Vidlers to head out on the weekends for sugarhouse and antique hunting expeditions in western New York.
Image showing the well illustrated pages of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”
More than simply a collection of photographs of old maple sugaring items, this book traces the history of the maple industry from Native Americans to early pioneers, and into the modern era. With a focus on the material remains of maple sugar and syrup making, there is a special emphasis on the changing technology of production and packaging as well as the change of materials from wood to metal as well as ceramic and glass. From the smallest and humblest wood or tin maple sugar mold to the large kettles, evaporators, or gathering tanks and onto the finest cut glass syrup pitchers, there is little that has been overlooked. Photographs, paintings and prints, and other printed ephemera like postcards and industry guidebooks and reports are also examined.
Additional example of pages from “Sugar-Bush Antiques” showing the many maple sugaring artifacts illustrated and described in the book.
According to Don Vidler, Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son, the Vidlers amassed a reasonably big collection of maple related antiques, some of which appeared in the photos in the book. Mrs. Vidler recognized that what is considered common place today, will someday be an antique and of interest to the collector. She was quoted in a 1985 newspaper article where she gave a bit of advice on her collecting strategy, noting “when you go to an auction at a farm in the sugar bush country, be sure to check out the items in the barns and behind the old sheds. That is where you will find the authentic sugar bush antiques that no one else seems to recognize.”
When the Vidlers were not running around the countryside visiting sugarbushes and sugarhouses, collecting antiques, or taking photographs, they spent most of their time running Vidler’s 5 and 10 in East Aurora, New York, a short distance from Buffalo. Vidler’s 5 and 10 was started by Ed Vidler’s father Robert Vidler in 1930 before brothers Ed and Bob Vidler took it over in the 1940s. Today, Vidler’s is known as the world’s largest 5 and 10 store. Virginia passed away in 1986 and Ed Vidler in 2019.
Sugar-Bush Antiques presents a good general overview of the wide range of tangible items that someone might consider collectible or of interest that represent or is related in some way to the business and activities of making, packaging, and selling maple sugar and maple syrup. Most sugar-bush antique collectors end up specializing in a few select areas or types of items like spouts, packaging tins, or sugar molds and develop a detailed knowledge of those items far beyond what one will find in this book; however, it is still enjoyable to sit down with a book like this and have a virtual museum tour at your fingertips. Fortunately, it is still possible to find used copies of the book through various online book sales websites.
For those looking for a local, home grown history of maple sugaring from one small corner of Essex County, Vermont, there is a great, little known book that is sure to please.
Titled A Wicked Good Run: Generations of Maple Sugaring in A Vermont Town, the book was put together and published in 2010 by Lunenburg village’s Top of the Common Committee. The Top of the Common Committee was formed in 2005 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit group to lead efforts to restore the Lunenburg Congregational Church and Old Town Hall located on the Top of The Common in Lunenburg village.
With A Wicked Good Run, the committee expanded their focus to collect and preserve photos and stories of the history and legacy of maple sugaring from across the town of Lunenburg. Like most Vermont towns, maple sugaring has brought together many families and friends in the town of Lunenburg. While the number of sugarbushes and sugar houses has declined over the years, the town of 1300 souls is still home to a number of commercial and family level operations. The 115-page A Wicked Good Runcan be ordered from the Top of Town Committee and is an enjoyable read and a great addition to the library of anyone interesting in maple syrup history.
Email goffnelson@gmail.com to request the Zoom invite.
A sugarbush of 50,000 taps, a network of pipelines to carry sap from the woods to collection points, with sap boiled on colossal evaporators in a series of syrup plants sounds like a description of a modern industrial maple syrup operation. For Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company 120 years ago, it was a novel attempt at making maple syrup in the Adirondack wilderness on a scale never before experienced. From 1896 to 1908, A.A. Low and his army of workers carved an industrial landscape out of the forest around Horseshoe Lake, complete with railroads, electrification, mills, dams, a private camp, and the centerpiece maple syrup operation. In time the landscape of A.A. Low’s private estate changed hands and uses, but as told in Matthew Thomas’ new the book, A Sugarbush Like None Other, the remnants of the story of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company can still be found on the land.
Please join author Matthew Thomas on September 9th at 7 pm for a virtual presentation of his research and field investigations that went into documenting the history and remains of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company.
My new book on maple history has hit the streets, titled A Sugarbush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. This book is the culmination of a number of years of archival and field research into the story and historic remains of Abbot Augustus Low’s turn of the century industrial scale maple syrup operation deep in the woods of the Adirondack wilderness of New York state. The size and complexity of A.A. Low’s maple operation was like nothing ever seen, either before, or for a long time after. As described in the eBay listing for online orders:
A sugarbush of 50,000 taps, a network of pipelines to carry sap from the woods to collection points, with sap boiled on colossal evaporators in a series of syrup plants sounds like a description of a modern industrial maple syrup operation. For Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company 120 years ago, it was a novel attempt at making maple syrup in the Adirondack wilderness on a scale never before experienced. This is the interesting tale of how from 1896 to 1908 one man, A.A. Low and his army of workers, carved an industrial landscape out of the forest, complete with railroads, electrification, mills, dams, a private camp, and the centerpiece maple syrup operation.
The book is illustrated with dozens of photographs, historic and recent, as well as original maps, and extensive documentation and references. With a soft cover format, the story is told across the following eleven chapters spanning 202 pages.
1 Introduction
2 A.A. Low – The Man and His Family
3 The Industrial Landscape and Estate of A.A. Low
4 Maple Sugaring in the Late Nineteenth Century
5 Making Maple Syrup and Maple Sugar at Horseshoe
6 Grasse River Sugarbush
7 Wake Robin Sugarbush
8 Maple Valley Sugarbush
9 Syrup House and Sugarbush Operations
10 An End and New Beginnings
11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
A Sugarbush Like None Other is available for immediate purchase through eBay at this link and will be on the shelf of bookstores and gifts shops in the northern New York and Adirondack region later this year. For additional information on the book visit www.sugarbushlikenoneother.com.
To mark 100 years of maple production, in February, Quebec’s maple federation, Producteurs et productrices acéricoles du Québec published a book on the history of maple sugaring and syrup making in Quebec titled Si l’érable m’était conté, 1920 – 2020: un siècle d’acériculture au Québec, which roughly translates in English to “If maple was told to me, 1920 – 2020: a century of maple syrup production in Quebec.”
The book is written in French and covers 16 chapters. It cost $22 CAD and can be ordered online at the Federation website. in addition there is a sample excerpt of the book, including the table of contents that can be found here.
The available copies may be limited, so if interested, I suggest one order online soon. I look forward to receiving my copy in the mail and will post a summary and review at a later date.
Every few years a new book comes out on the culture or history of maple sugaring and maple syrup many which are highlighted on this website. In addition to these new and easily found books are a number of classics that those interested in maple history may want to look for and add to their collections. Here are four such books written with a local or regional focus that were all published over ten years ago, some of which are now out of print.
From oldest to newest, first we have the book When the Sugar Bird Sings: The History of Maple Syrup in LanarkCounty by Claudia Smith. Published in 1996, this great little book features the history and stories of maple sugar and syrup making in and around Lanark County, Ontario. It is illustrated with numerous historic photos of Lanark County maple operations and boasts of Lanark County as the Maple Capital or Ontario. While out of print, this book can be found used online at such sources as www.abebooks.com and www.amazon.com.
Next up in the lineup is a massive 578-page tome from 1998 titled Reynolds, Maple and History: Fit For Kings by the late Lynn H. Reynolds from Aniwa, Wisconsin. This book, a labor of love for Lynn Reynolds that highlights the events and importance of the Reynolds family and their Reynolds Sugarbush, was privately published in a limited run of 450 copies by the Reynolds family, sadly only a few weeks following Lynn’s passing. In the 1960s and 1970s the Reynolds Sugarbush was the single largest maple syrup producing company in United States or Canada, making maple syrup from well over 125,000 taps. The three men of the company, father Adin Reynolds (1905-1987), and brothers Lynn H. Reynolds (1936-1998) and Juan L. Reynolds (1930-2008) were all prominent leaders in the maple industry during their heyday and both Adin and Lynn were inducted into the Maple Syrup Producers Hall of Fame.
Written from the memory and point of view of Lynn Reynolds, the book tells many histories in a side-by-side chronological fashion with the story of the Reynolds family presented in one font, maple syrup industry history in another font, and general local, Wisconsin, US, and World history presented in a third font. For the maple historian the book is chock full of names, dates and descriptions of events in the history of both the Wisconsin and North American maple industries. The Reynolds sections of the books recount the interesting growth of the Reynolds company as maple industry juggernaut despite of being located in north central Wisconsin, far from new England or Quebec.
Lynn Reynolds was not a shy man nor one to temper his opinions when they mattered to him, so unsurprisingly the book does suffer from a bit of Reynolds exceptionalism, but in all honesty, that is not without some degree of merit, since the Reynolds family was very influential and the Reynolds Sugarbush was pushing the scale of maple operations at that period in maple industry history. If you can find a copy of this book snatch it up immediately. I have used my copy so extensively for reference I even built my own index for easier use, available here. My copy has seen so much use (in spite of being purchased new) that it is coming apart at the binding, so maybe at some point in the future I will scan the whole book and seek permission from the Reynolds family to make it available here.
Third in this list is the book Maple Sugaring In New Hampshire by Barbara Mills Lassonde. Published in 2004 by Arcadia Publishing as part of their Images of America series, this book is still in print and available at the Arcadia Publishing website. Like all books in the Images of America series, Maple Sugaring in New Hampshire is a photo history book with hundreds of great images and accompanying captions tracing the history of maple production in New Hampshire from the colonial days up into the 21st century.
Lastly, is the very well researched book Spotza, Keelers, and Stirred Sugar: The Legacy of Maple Sugaring in Somerset County, Pennsylvania by Mark Ware. Released in 2006 by the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County, this well illustrated book presents years of research on the methods, material culture, and economic history of sugaring in a small but very active corner of Pennsylvania. With his position as the Executive Director of the Somerset County Historical Center, Mark Ware has taken the time to look deeply into the records, family histories, and artifacts and antiques. That knowledge is shared both in this book and in the exhibit of reconstructed 1860s sugar camp at the Somerset Historical Center. This book can be purchased online from the Somerset Historical Center website.
I was recently given the opportunity to contribute a chapter on the history of maple sugar and syrup production in the upcoming third edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual. This led me to look into the history and progression of such manuals and government guides in the United States.
U.S.D.A., Bureau of Forestry Bulletin 59, The Maple Sugar Industry, published in 1905.
The earliest stand-alone bulletin, guide, or pamphlet produced by a government agency comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1905 under the title The Maple Sugar Industry as Bulletin No. 59, published through the then Bureau of Forestry (today known as the U.S. Forest Service). Written by William F. Fox and William F. Hubbard, this bulletin was less of a guide or manual and more of a report or description of the current state of the maple industry. It was also notably dense in its description of the trees and desired conditions of the sugarbush and fairly light in its discussion of the process and equipment employed in gathering maple sap and making maple syrup and sugar. This is not especially surprising considering both Fox and Hubbard’s backgrounds as foresters and not sugarmakers. In fact, as best as my research can tell, neither Fox or Hubbard had any real experience as maple producers, both as youths or adults.
Image of William J. Fox while assisting Gifford Pinchot and the USDA with the influential Township 40 survey in the Adirondacks, establishing a model at the time for systematic and sustainable forestry.
That is not to say that these men were without some knowledge, understanding, or admiration for maple sugar making, quite the opposite. William F. Fox, who was listed as collaborator for Bureau of Forestry and not a federal employee, was in fact the Superintendent of Forests for the State of New York, and a confidant of Gifford Pinchot and prominent leader in the growing field of forestry. Fox was also a decorated Civil War hero and well-know chronicler of the War. Fox first wrote about and advocated for maple sugar and syrup as an important forest product in the 1898 Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forest of the State of New York. Prior to Bulletin 59, Fox published other writings and made presentations to such notable groups as the Vermont Maple Sugar Maker’s Association in the early 1900s.
Image of William J. Hubbard from the 1905 Washington Times story about his drowning in the Potomac River.
Like Fox, William F. Hubbard also appears to have lacked any direct experience with sugaring and instead was well-educated, young Forestry Assistant with a Doctorate in forestry from Germany. Although Bulletin 59 was published in the later months of 1905, Hubbard tragically died in July of that year, a few months before the bulletin was released. At the young age of 28 Hubbard drowned when his canoe overturned near the Great Falls of the Potomac River a few miles north of Washington, DC.
U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 252, Maple Sugar and Sirup, published in 1906.
In the following year, 1906, under the authorship of William F. Hubbard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture posthumously issued a new Farmer’s Bulletin No. 252 titled Maple Sugar and Sirup hat was a n abridged version of the information in Bulletin 59. These USDA bulletins from the federal government were new to the maple industry and not all were impressed. Maple equipment manufacturer Gustav H. Grimm, and one of the most influential voices in the industry at the time was quoted as saying that much of the information in Bulletin 252 was “way-off” and outdated.
U.S.D.A., Bureau of Chemistry Bulletin No. 134, Maple-Sap Sirup: Its Manufacture, Composition, and Effect of Environment Thereon, published 1910.
In 1910 the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry issued Bulletin No. 134 written by A. Hugh Bryan, a well-known chemist in their laboratory. This bulletin titled Maple-Sap Sirup: Its Manufacture, Composition, and Effects of Environment Thereon included a short description of the process of making maple sugar but largely discussed the methods and results of detailed chemical analyses of maple sap and maple syrup and sugar.
U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516, The Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar, published in 1912.
In spite of his passing in 1905, Hubbard’s writing, but curiously not Fox’s (who was not a USDA employee), continued to serve as the foundation for subsequent releases of new bulletins by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1912, Hubbard’s earlier bulletin was combined with Bryan’s in U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516 under the title The Production of Maple Sirup and Sugar. In comparison to earlier bulletins, No. 516 was more manual-like in its format and information, suggesting that, despite his being listed as the Chief of the Sugar Laboratory and a chemist, A. Hugh Bryan had expanded his breadth of knowledge with regard to the maple industry. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 516 was revised and reissued in 1918 under the same title and authorship.
U.S.D.A. Farmer’s Bulletin No. 134, published in 1924.
In 1924, Bryan and Hubbard’s Bulletin 516 was re-issued as Farmer’s Bulletin 1366 with the addition of a third author, a U.S.D.A. Bureau of Plant Industry Chemist named Sidney F. Sherwood. With a 1924 publication date, Bulletin 1366 came out after the death of both the primary authors. William F Hubbard had died in 1905 and A. Hugh Bryan died in 1920 at age 46, a victim of the influenza pandemic that struck North America from 1918-1920. It was left to Sidney Sheppard to carry the Bulletin forward.
With its release in 1924 Farmers’ Bulletin 1366 was made available for a mere 5 cents, although many copies were distributed to sugar makers free of charge. Bulletin 1366 continued as the U.S.D.A. guide to sugarmakers for another 20 years with Bryan, Hubbard, and Sherwood as the authors. It was reissued in 1935 and 1937 under the description of “slightly revised” although it is unclear who was responsible for the revision work.
There was a lull in the updating and issuance of maple syrup bulletins or guides by the USDA during the war years and for some time after. This may have been in reaction to the increase in similar publications coming out of the research and extension branches of many universities and state departments of agriculture or forestry in the maple syrup region starting in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s (Vermont being an exception with department of agriculture booklets dating to the 19-teens).
With the assistance and leadership of Charles O. Willits, the US Department of Agriculture got back online in 1958 with the issuance of a new comprehensive manual for producers, published as Agricultural Handbook No. 134. Willits first began his long association with the maple industry when he came to work in the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in the late 1930s where he began by addressing the concern with lead contamination in syrup. With a move to the USDA Eastern Regional Utilization Research and Development Laboratory in Philadelphia as an analytical chemist in 1940 followed by a request to lead a new maple syrup unit following World War II, Willits was put in a position to learn as much as he could about all aspects of maple syrup production.
U.S.D.A. Agricultural Handbook No. 134, published in 1958.
Willits assembled the considerable new information he had gathered and absorbed into a new and comprehensive manual for the maple syrup industry. Published in 1958, under the title Maple Sirup Producers Manual, the title was a well-chosen reflection of its difference from the previous USDA bulletins, featuring dozens or illustrative photographs with a focus on bringing the maple industry information on the newest methods, equipment, and science and technology available. Willits revised and expanded the manual in 1963, nearly doubling the page numbers over the 1958 version.
U.S.D.A. Agricultural Handbook No. 134, first published in 1963.
Upon reflection, it is impressive (to me at least) that Willits research, assembled, and wrote the entire manual himself, at a time when he was extremely busy with coordinating and conducting research, planning and hosting the triennial conference on maple products. In 1965 another revised version came out under Willits’ name and ten years later with the assistance of a second author, Claude H. Hills, a third version was released. The purchase price of the Agricultural Handbook No. 134 was initially 60 cents in 1958, although again, many copies were distributed at no cost. The revised editions from the 1960s saw the price jump to 70 cents, and then to $2.50 with the 1976 edition.
First Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual, published as The Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 856 in 1996.
With the retirement of C.O. Willits in the early 1980s and the discontinuation of the maple syrup unit at the USDA Eastern Region Lab in Philadelphia, the maple industry was left without a champion for continuation of the Maple Syrup Producers Manual. Recognizing the need and desire to continue to provide the industry with an up to date manual, participants of the 1988 North American Maple Syrup Council formed a committee to make plans to begin the revision process and bring forward a new version of the manual. With an eye towards serving the entire maple community, both in the United States and Canada, the following version of the manual was titled The North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual. In contrast to past manuals and bulletins that were written by one or two or three individuals, the North American Manual would have separate chapters authored by individual experts, sharing the workload and allowing authors to focus on their areas of knowledge and expertise. In the end it took more years than anyone expected for the new manual to be released but in 1996, with the help of The Ohio State University Extension, the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual was published in both hard cover and soft cover as Extension Bulletin 856.
Second Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual, published as The Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 856 in 2006.
Ten years later in 2006 coming in at a whopping 329 pages, a new and improved, revised Second Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual was released, again with the assistance of The Ohio State University Extension. In the not too distant future (sometime in 2021), we will see the Third Edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual released, continuing this tradition and important work of bringing together useful and valuable up to date information on maple syrup production and distributing it to the maple producers in North America.
From oldest to newest, first we have the book When the Sugar Bird Sings: The History of Maple Syrup in Lanark County by Claudia Smith. Published in 1996, this great little book features the history and stories of maple sugar and syrup making in and around Lanark County, Ontario. It is illustrated with numerous historic photos of Lanark County maple operations and boasts of Lanark County as the Maple Capital or Ontario. While out of print, this book can be found used online at such sources as 
Written from the memory and point of view of Lynn Reynolds, the book tells many histories in a side-by-side chronological fashion with the story of the Reynolds family presented in one font, maple syrup industry history in another font, and general local, Wisconsin, US, and World history presented in a third font. For the maple historian the book is chock full of names, dates and descriptions of events in the history of both the Wisconsin and North American maple industries. The Reynolds sections of the books recount the interesting growth of the Reynolds company as maple industry juggernaut despite of being located in north central Wisconsin, far from new England or Quebec.
