You can read my latest maple history contribution to the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association December 2023 newsletter at this link or by clicking on the image below.
This article looks at the history of Bucket Brand Syrup and the Pioneer Maple Products Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is not widely known that following the sale the Log Cabin Syrup Company to General Foods in 1927, the Towle family embarked on a second chapter in the blended syrup industry as the Pioneer Maple Products Company.
I recently took a research trip to Québec and while on that trip was pleased to discover a new maple history book published earlier this year by author Maxime Caouette. Written entirely in French, the book is titled, Histoire Acéricole: Anecdotes, Procédés techniques, Chalumeaux, which roughly translates in English to Maple Sugaring History: Anecdotes – Technology – Spouts. However, for those looking for an easy to read, yet comprehensive look at the highlights of maple sugaring history in Québec, I recommend getting a copy of this book and using the power of Google Translate or some other translation app to assist you in reading this book.
Overall, this is a book that recounts the general history of the maple syrup industry and the evolution of the process of making maple syrup. Since Maxime is a Québecois author, the book rightly focuses on what he knows best and what is closest to him, maple sugaring in Québec. It also highlights areas of maple history that are of special interest to Maxime, like vintage syrup cans and maple spout technology. The book also presents some of Maxime’s more personal connections to maple sugaring with anecdotes and stories shared with Maxime by his grandfather. Since discovering this book, I reached out to Maxime, who is bilingual and equally comfortable with French and English, and I have enjoyed a wide variety of conversations on maple history where we have each shared research and learned from one another.
Author Maxime Caouette.
As his photo shows, Maxime Caouette is a young man, but his age belies his knowledge and passion for maple history which has been passed down in his family. He may be young, but he has done his homework, and moreover continues to explore and expand the breadth of his knowledge of maple history. On his father’s side he is a fifth-generation maple syrup maker and was raised in Lévis, Québec. He has completed advanced studies in agriculture and is currently employed with a maple equipment manufacturing company. While always interested in maple history and hearing stories from his grandfather, his focus and research efforts increased while undertaking his agricultural studies, leading to a desire to assemble what he had gathered and learned in this book.
Example of the fine illustrations in Histoire Acéricole.
At 183 pages, this softcover book is not massive in its presentation, but in my opinion it is the single most current and up to date volume that covers the breadth of maple history, both in the early years, but more importantly the last century. What I like about Maxime’s book is that it is easy to read and well organized, and is nicely illustrated with both color and black and white images. Moreover, it covers the highlights of what I consider to be some of the most important themes, events and developments in the 20th century maple industry in Canada and the United States.
I especially like this book because in telling the story of maple sugaring in Québec, it covers the topics that interest me most. It struck me that this is the sort of book I might write and contains the sort of information that I might include. Perhaps my fondness for the book stems from the fact that in researching and writing the book, Maxime regularly consulted many of the posts and historical research shared on this website. What’s not to love about that!
The book features abundant color photographs and a clear, well-organized layout.
Like all good overviews of maple history, Maxime covers the topic of the origins of maple sugaring and the role of Indigenous peoples in bringing maple sugaring to the world. But more importantly, the book is about all aspects of the maple industry, past and present, including explaining how maple syrup is made today. Maxime does a great job of breaking the process down into its many steps and then focusing on each step to talk about the evolution of the tools and technology that were used. Although the primary focus is on the history of maple sugaring, Maxime’s volume does what most books focused on the history of maple sugaring technology do not do, and that is he combines the past processes with a clear presentation and explanation of the modern methods and technology.
The book includes a presentation of the evolution of the maple sap tap from its wood to its various metal shapes and designs, on to today’s plastic spouts. Maxime shares a detailed listing and evolution of plastic spouts for use with plastic tubing, something not found in other books dedicated to the history of early metal and wood spouts.
Pages from the section on the evolution and variety of the more modern spouts specifically designed for use with plastic tubing.
Maxime also includes a glossary of maple sugaring terms (in French), an inventory of the major maple equipment manufacturing companies (Canadian and US), and presents a timeline of events important in maple history, which as one would expect, is uniquely Québec-centric and notably different that the timelines that are commonly shared in the United States. Besides being a great educational tool, this is a wonderful reminder of the biases in the histories told in each of our countries and the need to work hard to ignore and remove the border as a barrier to studying and learning about North America’s entire history of maple sugaring.
As was stated at the beginning of this post, this book is entirely written in French, but I would not let that be a deterrent to the interested reader. Pull out your mobile phone and open the camera function in the Google Translate App and use that tool to translate the French to English. Sure, it can be cumbersome, but it is worth the effort in my opinion.
Image of the home page of the Histoire Acéricole website.
In addition to his book, Maxime has created an interesting website to both promote the book but also to share additional photos and information about such topics as vintage Québec syrup cans and a collection of historic advertisements for maple syrup equipment companies.
The book was published by Lac Plume D’Oie Edition, a small Québec based vanity press, but all orders for copies at this time are made through the author. The book can be purchased by contacting Maxime Caouette in Québec through the contact form on his website: www.histoireacericole.wixsite.com/website. The book is listed for CAD$30.00 and payment for shipment to addresses in the United States will be at the expense of the purchaser.
For Vermonters, the quickest way to start a fight or elicit an opinion is to declare where one can get the best maple creemee in the State. But what exactly is a creemee and from where does the name originate? In the past, some journalists and interested commentators have weighed in with their opinions, but few seem to have actually researched the question and looked at what the historical record might offer. So, with that in mind, I dug a little deeper and this is what I found.
The author enjoying a maple creemee on the porch of Bragg Farm and Sugarhouse in East Montpelier, Vermont.
Although many readers of this website are familiar with the creemee, it is important to first clarify and describe what exactly a creemee is and is not. A creemee is a kind of soft-serve ice milk (even though it is called ice cream) made from a liquid milk-based mix that includes sweeteners, flavorings, stabilizers, and emulsifiers and can be found in a variety of flavors. The mix goes into a specially designed machine that turns and chills the mix, adding air and forming small ice crystals, giving soft serve its smooth and creamy texture that is firm but not as hard as traditional ice cream with its larger ice crystals. Soft-serve machines are then able to dispense the ice-milk into a dish or cone in on-demand single servings.
In some cases, the flavoring is added by the manufacturers of the purchased mix, Un other cases, the flavoring is added by the machine on an individual basis as it is drawn from the machine’s freezing and turning drum before dispensing. What makes creemees, and any soft-serve ice-milk, different from traditional hard or hand-dipped ice cream is that creemees have a lower milk-fat content, have substantially more air by volume, and usually does not contain egg, unless it is frozen custard. Creemees are usually 5-8% milk fat, whereas ice cream is at least 10% and usually closer to 20% milk fat.
Having established what a creemee is (soft-served ice-milk), the real questions of interest here are where does the name creemee come from, and what are the origins of the maple flavored creemee that is so unique to Vermont? The spelling of the name itself is somewhat of a mixed bag. While the most common spelling is creemee with two Es and no hyphen, over the years the name has been spelled a variety of ways, ranging from creamie to creamee to cree-mee. As far the “correct” spelling goes, it seems that as long as it sounds the same, you can spell it any number of ways. For example, the Rutland County Maple Producers used three different spellings in the early years of selling their creemees at the Vermont State Fair.
It has sometimes been written in Vermont that the creemee name is unique to Vermont and that it is unclear where the creemee name originated. Some have offered a more romantic suggestion that the source for creemee came from neighboring French-speaking Quebec where the words for ice cream are crème glacée, from which a shortened contraction could get you cree-mee or creemee. However, a little historical research points us to a far less romantic origin to the name creemee. Additionally, it turns out that creemee soft serve ice cream was hardly unique to Vermont and that the creemee name has been around in Vermont and many other places in the United States for over 70 years.
Let’s start with the beginnings of soft serve. Looking at the history of soft-serve ice milk machines, we see that they were first invented in the late 1930s. By the early 1940s, there were a handful of soft-serve stores in the mid-west states. Following the end of World War II, soft-serve stands begin to appear in much greater numbers, usually as small, seasonal walk-up stands.
Interestingly, until the late 1940s, some states and local communities had regulations prohibiting the sale of soft-serve ice milk in individual servings. Some ice cream manufacturers were concerned that lower priced ice milk, with its lower milk-fat content was falsely being sold as ice cream, which by law had to have at least 10% milkfat. To protect their interests, across the country in places like Minnesota, Alabama, Hawaii and Florida, the ice cream lobby promoted rules that required all ice milk to be sold only in clearly labeled packages declaring the contents to be ice milk. Whether it was intentional is not clear, but such packaging and labeling rules had the results of preventing the sale of ice milk in individual cones or bowls to customers. A growing interest in the popular soft-serve stands, fueled by technological improvements in soft-serve machines encouraged business interests to push for changes in the ice- milk regulations and change the rules that previously only allowed ice-cream (based on milk-fat levels) to be sold in individual servings.
Ad for Cree-Mee store in Vergennes, Vermont, from the Enterprise and Vermonter, June 28, 1951, page 5.
As a result, a soft-serve explosion began around 1950 and continued for the next couple of years, when a handful of entrepreneurial businessmen promoted the opening of franchised soft-serve stands under names like Dari-Freeze, Tastee Freez, Dairy Queen, and most notably, Cree-Mee. In 1947 there were a few hundred soft serve stands around the country, but by 1955 there were estimated to be over 10,000 stands in operation. The Freez-King Company, also known as the Harlee Manufacturing Company, out of Chicago, Illinois promoted the Cree-Mee name as one of its soft-serve stand brand names. President and owner of the Freez-King Company, Leo Maranz stated that he opened his first franchise in March 1951 and by the end of 1955 he himself would have 1425 stands, including several Cree-Mee stands in Vermont.
The first Vermont stands with Cree-Mee in their name opened in June and August of 1951 in Vergennes as the Cree-Mee Custard Store, in Manchester as Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand, and Cree-Mee of Burlington.
Advertisement for Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand that appeared in the Rutland Daily Herald, June 14, 1952, page 11.
By 1952 there was also the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive In north of Brattleboro, Lovella’s Cree-Mee on the Barre-Montpelier Rd., and perhaps a few others.
1952 ad for Lovella’s Cree-Mee stand in Barre, Vermont from the Barre Daily Times, June 3, page 7.
Through the rest of 1950s a few more Cree-Mee franchises opened in Vermont and, like the brand names of Kleenex for facial tissues or Band-Aid for adhesive bandages, Creem-Mee brand soft-serve was common and ubiquitous enough to take on the role as the universal term for soft-serve ice-milk in Vermont. As much as Vermonters love to think of the creemee as their own home-grown invention, the truth is far less romantic.
Advertisement for the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive in Brattleboro, Vermont that appeared in the June 12, 1952 Brattleboro Reformer, page 5.
The creemee had its start elsewhere in the United States and has been a frozen desert staple in Vermont for over 70 years. Things get a little more interesting when looking at the origins of the maple flavored creemee, which is a flavor that is truly unique to Vermont. Initially, the flavors offered for creemees in the 1950s and 1960s were limited to vanilla and chocolate. Sometimes pineapple was on the menu as well as a weekly special flavor. However, there is no indication that maple was ever offered as a creemee flavor in Vermont (or anywhere else) until the 1980s.
Image of Carl Johnson and Jack Bittner’s Cree-Mee stand in Brattleboro. These Cree-Mee stands from the Harlee Manufacturing Company were of a unform design and may even have been prefabricated. Brattleboro Reformer, June 6, 1952, page 5.
The maple creemee was introduced by the Rutland County Maple Producers (RCMP) at their stand at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland in 1981. The first place I found mention of this detail was in a September 5, 2007, letter to the editor of the Rutland Daily Herald written by Pam Green, a Rutland County maple producer and member of the International Maple Hall of Fame. Wanting to know more, I contacted Pam Green and asked where she learned of the date and details of this event and if she could tell me more. Pam graciously shared that she learned of the RCMP origins of the maple creemee from the late Wilson “Bill” Clark, long-time Rutland County maple producer, past president of the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers Association and collector of Vermont maple heritage. Bill Clark told Pam Green of how, in 1981, C. Blake Roy, a recently retired maple marketing specialist for the Vermont Department of Agriculture, suggested the RCMP sell a maple flavored creemee at the Vermont State Fair. Taking Blake’s brainchild to the next step, Clark and RCMP president, Truman Young, brought the idea along with a few gallons of B Grade maple syrup to Tom Seward at Seward’s Dairy in Rutland, Vermont.
Examples of three spellings of “creemee” by the Rutland County Maple Producers, 1992, 1994, and 1999.
My next step was to try to get first-hand information that took me as close to the participants and events as I could. Unfortunately, C. Roy Blake had passed away in 1986 and Bill Clark died in 2021. Thankfully I was able to get in touch with Tom Seward, who confirmed the story shared by Pam Green and added important details. Tom told me that at that time, the RCMP had their own creemee machine at their Vermont State Fair stand and Seward’s had been providing the RCMP with the mix for making their vanilla creemees which were served with syrup poured on top.
According to Tom, the RCMP contacted Seward’s Dairy with the maple flavored creemee idea in 1980 or 1981. At the time, the Dairy was making their own vanilla and chocolate flavored creemee mixes for sale to creemee vendors in two and a half gallon bags. To make the maple flavored mix they used the recipe for the 5% fat content vanilla and replaced the liquid sugar in the recipe with maple syrup.
Image of the old Rutland County Maple Producers maple products stand at the Vermont State Fair where they sold many maple creemees over the years.
Tom went on to tell me, it was a special product made in small batches, 300 gallons at a time put up into 600 one half gallon containers. The Dairy mixed in the syrup at the end of the mixing process when it was all in the pasteurization vat. It was heated to 165F for 30 minutes then cooled in a tank and packaged into paper containers or bags.It was pasteurized and had a 21-day shelf life, long enough to last for the duration of the fair. For the RCMP’s maple flavored mix, it was requested that they put the mix into ½ gallon paper containers rather than the normal 2.5 gallon creemee mix bags. The paper containers were easier to handle by volunteers at the RCMP stand than the heavier and saggy 2.5 gallon bags.
The RCMP’s maple creemee was an instant hit, and by the second year they were being asked to make a second batch, since the first was selling out. At the end of the Vermont Fair, if there was still some mix left over, The RCMP took what little they had, froze it, and brought it to the Eastern States Expo to sell maple creemees. As a result, the specially made maple flavored mix was always used up and none went to waste. Seward’s made this maple mix only for the RCMP, continuing until around 1988.
There is one slight bump in the road for this narrative which was brought to my attention by Corinne Cooper, President of the Berlin, Vermont Historical Society. After reading an earlier version of this article and doing a little research of her own, Ms. Cooper discovered that the “Friendly Craft Shop” operated by Mrs. Nellie Spooner in Marshfield, Vermont was advertising the sale of a maple frozen custard in the summer of 1952.
Advertisement for maple frozen custard from page 10 of July 16 Barre Daily Times.
So far, follow-up investigations suggest that the Friendly Craft Shop frozen custard stand was short-lived, with advertisements only appearing in the newspaper for the 1952 season and Mrs. Spooner offering her custard machine for sale a few years later. This early example of maple flavored frozen soft serve in the custard style is worth remembering, but I don’t think it stands up to test of having made a significant or lasting impact sufficient to warrant giving it credit as the origin of the maple flavored creemee.
In the end, the history of the Vermont maple creemee is perhaps not as romantic as one might expect. The creemee has been around for over 70 years in Vermont and the rest of the United States and thanks to some creative minds in the Rutland County Maple Producers, the maple creemee has been a delight since 1981.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade – Courtesy Susan Deborah Wade.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade is a historian who recently completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee titled, “Ojibwe Women and Maple Sugar Production in Anishinaabewakiing and the Red River Region, 1670-1873”. Maple Syrup History website creator Matthew Thomas (MT) had the recent pleasure of conducting the following email interview with Dr. Wade (SDW) to learn more about her interesting and important work and share it with interested readers.
—————————–
MT: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and share your research with the readers of my website. It is always a pleasure to discover new and interesting scholarship on topics related to maple history. With my own background in ethnohistory and Indigenous studies, I am especially excited to read and share your work with the maple history community. Can you give us a quick summary of what your dissertation is about and what you have learned?
SDW: My dissertation focuses on Indigenous women and an important food product – maple sugar. This foodstuff was used as medicine, food, trade good, and as a gift. The setting for this work is Anishinaabewakiing, a large region that is eventually divided by an international border by the British and Americans in 1783 (editor’s note: the Red River region encompasses portions of today’s Manitoba, Ontario, North Dakota, and Minnesota). Fur trade companies and settlers on both sides of this border used maple sugar as a provision for workers, and as a sweetener in place of hard to get and expensive cane sugar. Maple sugar was traded by Indigenous women for trade goods and in turn collected and auctioned by fur trade companies to increase their profits. As settlers moved into the Great Lakes region, land use changed. For example, treaties reduced the amount of land the Anishinaabeg had to continue producing maple sugar and lumber companies clear cut forests.
Map showing territory of Anishinaabe peoples in United States and Canada. Source – https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/anishinaabe#
MT: The title of your doctoral dissertation contains many interesting clues to what one can expect to encounter in its reading. Can you tell us more about the choices and importance of the different components in the title of your dissertation? Such as your reason for choosing these particular start and end dates, why the Red River region, or the meaning of the word Anishinaabewakiing?
Map showing range of acer negundo, aka Manitoba Maple or Boxelder. Note overlap of range of acer negundo with earlier map of Anishinaabe territory. Their intersection is an area of focus in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=3
SDW: I expanded on my master’s thesis which focused on maple sugar production by Indigenous women set in what is now Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. In my dissertation I wanted to expand the time frame and region but also more important to write about an Indigenous perspective, and the land the Anishinaabeg inhabit. The Anishinaabeg are the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. Part of learning about an Anishinaabeg perspective is both learning and using Anishinaabemowin (Anishinaabe language). I set the narrative in Anishinaabewakiing and discuss northern and southern Anishinaabewakiing when the international border is drawn on the map in 1783. The Ojibwe migrate west into the Red River region in the mid 18th century and tapped Manitoba Maple.
MT: In 2011 you completed a master’s thesis in history at UW Milwaukee focusing on a similar topic of Indigenous Women and Maple Sugaring the Upper Midwest, albeit covering a slightly smaller time span of 1760 to 1848 and a different geographic space of the Upper Midwest. How did you get interested in this topic and how did your master’s thesis research set the stage for your doctoral research?
SDW: When I began thinking about getting a master’s degree it was to become a better researcher in my job as an historic cook and collections manager at living history sites where I worked. I grew up in Canada and had a passion for fur trade history and maple syrup. The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee had a course on food history and a fur trade scholar, Dr. Cary Miller in the History Department. I began working with Dr. Miller on fur trade history and Great Lakes Indigenous history. In one of the courses, I read Susan Sleeper-Smith’s Indian Women and French Men. There was a tantalizing reference to maple sugar being shipped east to Detroit. I wanted to know more about who produced it, who collected it and where else it was shipped. Eventually, with the help of Dr. Miller I shaped a master’s thesis that was narrow enough in scope for a master’s theses but with the ability to expand in depth and breadth to a dissertation.
MT: Where would you place your research and interests as far as established schools of research? Do you see your work as ethnohistory, Indigenous studies, gender studies, food history, cultural geography, or a less structured but more inclusive interdisciplinary studies?
SDW: I see it as an interdisciplinary study that includes food history, Indigenous studies, traditional archival analysis, and analysis of language.
MT: Maple sugar in its various roles as a food item, an exchange good, or as a tool of economic power is central to your research. How has your research help us understand the historic role and place of Indigenous peoples in the development and evolution of the modern maple industry?
SDW: Indigenous women in the sugar maple growing region were instrumental in introducing maple sugar to colonists. Maple sugar was also modified in its appearance by Indigenous women to satisfy the need by upper class settlers for white sugar – white cane sugar was an indicator of wealth. Hand in hand with trade was the introduction of alterative equipment like copper kettles for producing maple products, and further changes to production. Great Lakes fur trade companies exported maple sugar east and, in some cases, Indigenous women’s maple sugar made it to Britain’s shores.
MT: Has developing a deeper understanding of the cultural and economic importance of maple products sparked interest in looking at questions of maple use in other historic contexts?
SDW: It has sparked an interest in the use of other maple products such as vinegar. It has also sparked an interest in the use of the sap of other trees in the Great Lakes region such as birch and the sap of trees on other continents.
MT: Your research topic geographically covers portions of what are today the United States and Canada, and likely your source materials were found in both countries, not to mention probably being written in English and French. What kinds of historical source material were you able to examine for your research and were there challenges to working with source material from two separate countries and languages?
SDW: I did not deal with too many French sources. The companies I concentrated on were British, Scottish, or American run companies. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was run out of London, England. I went to the HBC archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Example of archival materials used in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, Journal of Occurrences at Henly District 1819/20, B.117/a/4.
That is a wonderful archive and the Hudson’s Bay Company has detailed documentation of its posts. The management in London expected daily accounts of what was happening at the posts as well as detailed records of trade. The North West Company (NWC) was formed by small fur trade companies owned by Scottish merchants living in Montreal. Although they kept the French-Canadian voyageurs on their payroll the men who ran the posts were English speaking. The HBC eventually took over the NWC in 1821 and the men who ran the posts did not keep as detailed records as the HBC. The American Fur Company (AFC), established in 1808 in New York, had ties with some of the merchants in Montreal, but after the War of 1812 had virtual monopoly in the southern Anishinaabewakiing region. For the AFC I primarily used “Grace Lee Nute’s “Calendar of the American Fur Company Papers.” Some records for a small Montreal company, the XY company, that eventually joined with the NWC can be found in the Collections of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.
MT: Your study covers a time span of over two hundred years, during which a lot of things may have changed within the Fur Trade and Indigenous communities. What changes did you find over this span related to the manufacture, trade, or sale of maple sugar?
SDW: There were changes in all these areas. Changes in production happened as Indigenous people encountered European trade goods. The equipment changed as trade items were introduced and adapted and adopted by Indigenous groups for use. There were also changes to both the appearance and amount of sugar produced. Upper class white settlers and upper-class Hudson’s Bay company officers wanted maple sugar to look like white cane sugar and Indigenous women shifted the way they processed and purified some of the sugar for this market. In the spring of 1836, the man who oversaw a Hudson’s Bay Company post in the Lake Superior region sent two men to sugar camps to secure or “reserve the right” to trade for that year’s supply. The HBC did not want to miss out on this valuable commodity by having the rival AFC trade for it first.
MT: Your scholarly interests are not purely in the realm of ethnohistory, gender and Indigenous studies. You recently were part of a team that translated the classic French children’s book, “The Little Prince” into Anishinaabemowin, the Indigenous language of the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe peoples. How did you get involved in this project and how has working with Anishinaabemowin influenced your historical research?
SDW: My thesis advisor and advisor at the beginning of my dissertation, Cary Miller, stressed the importance of learning Anishinaabemowin in order to understand an Ojibwe worldview and to make connections with community members. I was taught the language by Margaret Noodin. I also worked with Dr Noodin on a grant, Ganawendamaw. As part of this grant, I helped with curriculum development for Anishinaabemowin class. One book used by teachers of many different languages is Le Petit Prince, it is translated in to so many languages. She was interested in completing a translation for use by teachers and families interested in learning Anishinaabemowin. I worked with her, Michael Zimmerman, and Angela Mesic to translate the text. It was during Covid lock down and was a wonderful experience to work with these scholars and create a text that could be used to teach and continue to revitalize the Anishinaabe language.
MT: The reservation era, a period immediately following the period of your study, saw great changes and upheaval for Indigenous communities. It would please me greatly to learn that you have plans for carrying this research further to look at the reservation era when forced relocation to reservations limited the seasonal mobility to places like sugaring camps, fur trade economies were replaced by cash-based settler economies, and substantial changes in gendered divisions of labor?
SDW: My master’s thesis did not go into this topic, but my dissertation does discuss the effects of settler colonialism on the Ojibwe and maple sugar production. One of the chapters talks about the ways Great Lakes and Red River nations keep a hold of their culture through treaty negotiations. In the nineteenth century in the United States, Ojibwe ogimaag (leaders) negotiated for the rights to gather resources on ceded land also known as usufructuary rights in the United States. In the case of Ojibwe in Canada, the ogimaag negotiated with the Canadian government in what is called the Numbered Treaties. In these regions the First Nations, including Ojibwe, did not cede land but instead negotiated for sharing the land and working with Euro-Canadians in taking care of natural resources. This, however, was not the intention of the Canadian government or her representatives whose aim was a surrender of lands. In the case of maple sugar, it was not just resources that were taken away, but also women-centered places where political activities, ceremonies, and teaching took place. It was a loss of women’s roles in their environment.
By the late nineteenth century, cane and beet sugar became the dominant form of table and cooking sugar. Maple sugar production waned but maple syrup gained in popularity, as you explain in your dissertation “Where the Forest Meets the Farm.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in matters of maple syrup manufacturing it was not just the decimation of maple groves and appropriation of land but the attack on gendered food procurement. The Allotment Act (1887) promoted the life of the yeoman farmer whereby a man worked his farmland. Reservation land was divided into single farms given to men of households or single men. Although Indigenous women continued to harvest wild rice, collect berries and other resources, and manufacture maple sugar. It was not until after the Great Depression in the 1930s, that Indigenous men began to take on the production of maple sugar and syrup. Today Anishinaabeg maple production is more multi-gendered.
MT: You defended your dissertation in 2021. What is next? Do you plan to publish the doctoral study as a book length monograph, or will you be focusing on publishing the results in the form of a peer-reviewed article?
SDW: I have been working on a manuscript that combines my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. It has been a challenge learning to rewrite a dissertation into a book. I hope to send it to a publisher by the end of this summer. I am also working with a fellow scholar to create an exhibit on maple trees and the maple sugar bush.
You can read and download a copy of Dr. Wade’s doctoral dissertation at THIS LINK.
At the end of prohibition the first alcohol to legally be distilled in the state of Vermont was produced using pure maple syrup as its base sugar instead of cane sugar or corn or grain. Soon after the production of alcohol for consumption was again made legal, the Green Mountain Distillery in Burlington began using maple syrup, a locally available commodity and well-loved food item, to create a unique and rum like liquor as well as a sweet liqueur.
The story of the Green Mountain Distillery’s beginning, short life, and ending are the focus of my latest contribution to the June 2023 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest(Vol. 62, no. 2). For those that may not be familiar with the Maple Syrup Digest, it is the official quarterly publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council. You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
I was excited to recently learn of a great project to excavate, reconstruct, and reuse an open-air stone and earth boiling arch for supporting a flat pan for boiling maple sap.
Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Phot courtesy of Janet Woods.
With the help of the Boy Scouts from Erie County’s General McLane School District Troop 176 and Legacy Troop 73, Boy Scout J.C. Williams completed this project as part of his Eagle Badge at the sugarbush of the Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum near Edinboro, Pennsylvania.
Cover of Virginia Sorensen’s Newberry Medal winning book, Miracles on Maple Hill.
Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is home to a great family-friendly maple museum that showcases the history of maple syrup but also tells the tale of the back story of Virginia Sorensen’s 1957 Newberry Award winning children’s book, Miracles on Maple Hill. In writing the book, Virginia Sorensen drew from her experiences living in northwest Pennsylvania. A significant portion of the story of Miracles on Maple Hill centers on activities in a rural sugarhouse and sugarbush as a family struggles to work together to overcome and deal with the father’s trauma of returning to home life after World War Two.
The sugar house at Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Photo by author.
But Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is much more than a museum, which is open all year round. Hurry Hill also has a working sugarbush and outdoor maple history interpretive walking trail that are open for visitors during the sugaring season. The methods and appearance of the syrup making in the sugarhouse are fairly rustic and consistent with what one would see in much of the 20th century. In fact, construction of two sugarhouses on the farm date to 1930. Also on display are a series of large iron kettles suspended over an open fire to show how maple sugaring was done in the colonial era.
Demonstration of boiling sap in kettles at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Eric Marendt.
On the annual Northwest Pennsylvania Maple Association Taste & Tour weekend, Scouts from the above-mentioned troops are busy demonstrating boiling sap in the iron kettles, explaining the history and process to interested visitors. It is common at demonstration sites teaching about the history of maple syrup to show the colonial era method of boiling in kettles. Luckily for the Scouts, who otherwise spend the weekend standing around in the cold and wind, they have protection from the elements in the form of an Adirondack shelter that was built at the site in 2013 as part of another Scout’s Eagle Badge project.
Historic image from 1927 of open air boiling on a flat pan and stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.
Historic image of use of a flat pans balanced on a stone and earth arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.
Thankfully, Hurry Hill Maple Farm’s owner Janet Woods, whose family has been working this sugarbush since 1939, realized that there was the long-forgotten remains of an old stone and earth arch perfectly situated in the sugarbush along the interpretive walking trail between the sugarhouse, the kettles and Adirondack shelter. From his previous years of telling about the kettle boiling process at the Taste & Tour weekend, senior scout J.C. Williams had an understanding of the role of the arch and flat pan in the evolution of boiling technology. Through conversations with Janet Woods, J.C. Williams was also aware of the presence of the remains of the old stone and earth arch and proposed that as his Eagle Badge project, the Scout Troop would dig it up and rebuild it in the fall and in the following spring use it to boil sap with a flat pan.
Eagle Scout J.C. Williams taking measurements of abandoned stone and earth arch before beginning excavation in October 2022. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
Plans were put into motion and the excavation and reconstruction work was caried out over the course of a weekend in October 2022, under the direction of J. C. Williams and with the assistance of a few of his fellow scouts, their fathers, and the troop leader Eric Marendt. Initially, measurements and notes were made of the size, shape and appearance to be able to rebuild the arch as close to those specifications as possible. After that, vegetation was cleared and the soil was removed from around the rocks and in the central firebox area.
Excavations in progress of stone arch by scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
Having visited Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum the previous summer, Janet Woods was aware of my interest in all things maple history but she also knew that I was an archaeologist who actually had first-hand experience with researching and documenting stone and earth boiling arches. Janet contacted me to tell me about their progress and ask for any advice or details of what to look for and expect. I spoke briefly with the scouts on the day of the excavation to give them an idea of what their digging might find. I also sent them a handful of historic photos of similar arches in use as well as some images from archaeological investigations of arches.
Close up photo of reused scrap metal that was recovered from the excavations of the stone and earth arch. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
I also shared that from my research experience and from my knowledge of other excavations of similar arches, it was very common to find miscellaneous pieces of old heavy metal that were used as makeshift fire grates, supports and leveling pieces for the flat pan, and as walls to the interior fire ox and arch door. True to form, the scout’s excavation work uncovered an assortment of metal from old car parts, metal bar, and an old cross-cut saw blade.
Reconstructed stone and earth boiling arch with metal support beams and interior grate, ready for the sap to flow the flowing spring. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
After dismantling the arch, the scouts rebuilt it with an eye to making it a strong, functional and level support for a heavy metal flat pan that would be filled with maple sap for boiling the following spring. Repurposed old pieces of metal pipe and a grate were added for the fire box and as supports to slide the 3 1/2 foot by 4 /1/2 foot flat pan on and off the fire.
As an archaeologist I have had the priveledge of finding and recording dozens of similar stone arches and have read reports of similar investigations of abandoned arches, some bult for small 2 x 3 flat pans and other built for pans possibly as large as 5 x 12 feet.
Two photos of the reconstructed arch and flat pan in operation. Note the Adirondack shelter built by the scout troop in 2013 in the back of the photo on the right. Photos courtesy of Eric Marendt.View of the reconstructed arch in use with flat pan evaporating sap at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
In the case of this project, it was especially enjoyable for me to see that not only were these scouts able to learn something about arch technology and use from its excavation, but in the spirit of experimental archaeology, that they were going to learn even more by taking it to the next two steps of rebuilding and reusing the arch. It is true that there are still many backyard sugarmakers that use a small flat pan like was used here, but most folks build cinderblock arches or use some other modern materials.
Eagle Scout J.C. Williams on left, with fellow scout and parents at work reconstructing the stone and earth arch in October 2022. Note the size of the stones that were used and reset in the arch. Photo courtesy of Jante Woods.
It is exceedingly rare today to find anyone still building a stone and earth arch. With the help of a knowledgeable volunteer at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts had a bonus of a geology lesson, when Kirk Johnson, himself an Eagle Scout 55 years ago, explained the glacial significance and thermal properties of the large glacial erratic granite boulders that had been selected and used in the original build of the arch.
Historic image from 1957 of sap boiling n a flat pan on stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.
Like the many hundreds and thousands of families that constructed arches their sugarbushes from the stones and left over metal at their disposal, these scouts had the real experience of learning how to best, level the pan and boil in a stone arch, not to mention how to get the best fire and airflow. If one thing is true, scouts love a reason to play with fire and you can bet that by the end of the weekend, these scouts had a pretty strong boil going from the 50 gallons they collected from pails on nearby trees.
With the arrival of the 2023 maple season and the annual Taste & Tour weekend at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts were able to put their work to the test and add the reconstructed stone arch and flat pan to the maple history tour and educational program. In mid-March, six scouts camped out in the snow along side the Adirondack shelter, kettles, and flat pan with additional scouts from the troop joining during the day to help with the tour, keeping the fires burning and the steam rising.
Groups shot of the flat pan and arch in use with scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176 with Janet Woods on far right. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.
Many maple education programs suffer from an over-emphasis on romanticized presentations of the early history of maple syrup and sugar making technology, such as showing the use of kettles but leaving out flat pans. In fact, one could argue that the use of flat pans and stone arches like the one rebuilt at Hurry Hill Maple Farm was even more extensive in numbers and spread and had a much greater economic importance than the era and use of iron kettles. As a promoter and sometimes critic of the telling of maple history, what made me happy with this story, besides simply seeing a younger generation show interest in maple syrup history, was that Hurry Hill Maple Farm was now able to tell and show visitors a more complete history of the changes and improvements to maple syrup technology. What was a great maple history museum and very good maple education program is only that much better.
Special thanks to Janet Woods, Eric Marendt, and the scouts from Troops 73 and 176 for sharing their story and photos of this project and letting us all enjoy this experience.
Today it is common to find pure maple syrup for sale in a variety of attractive and interestingly shaped and sized glass bottles, such as maple leaves, snowmen, barrels and unique flasks, curets, and decanters. Fancy glass, or specialty glass bottles as they are sometimes called, began appearing in the maple industry in the 1980s and really took off in the late 1990s. Among this category of packaging, the cabin or chalet shaped glass bottle stands out for having a particularly interesting story. First introduced in 1998 by the Vetrerie Bruni glass company, this bottle was designed and sold for packaging maple syrup and was originally released as a 250 ml (8.45 ounce) bottle with a plastic or metal screw-on cap.
In 2000, this bottle was the center of a short-lived, but notable controversy, when Aurora Foods, Inc., the parent company of the Log Cabin Syrup brand, threatened a small Vermont maple syrup company with trademark violations for using this cabin shaped bottle. In February 2000, Aurora Foods (Aurora Foods bought the Log Cabin brand from Kraft- General Foods in 1997), sent both the L.L. Bean company of Portland, Maine, and Highland Sugarworks, then out of Starksboro, Vermont, threatening cease-and-desist letters. Specifically, the letters ordered L.L. Bean and Highland Sugarworks to stop using the cabin shaped bottle, to destroy all their inventory of the containers, and turn over all profits made from sale of the syrup in these bottles.
There was actually a precedent for Log Cabin Syrup being packaged in a glass cabin shaped bottle, but Aurora Foods made no mention of it in its threat to Highland Sugarworks. In 1965, while part of the General Foods corporate umbrella, Log Cabin Syrup was offered for one year in a special glass cabin shaped bottle that could be reused as a bank.
Examples of the 1965 one pint Log Cabin Syrup glass cabin bank.
One side featured a door and two windows, with the back side displaying two windows. The words “Log Cabin” were embossed on the roof on both sides of the bottle. The metal cap came with a pre-cut slot for coins with a cardboard insert in the cap that one removed after the syrup was emptied and the bottle cleaned.
At the time of the controversy, Highland Sugarworks was a relatively small independent maple syrup manufacturing and packing company owned and run by husband and wife, Judy MacIssac and Jim MacIsaac, the latter now deceased. L.L. Bean was a reseller of Highland Sugarworks’ syrup and, as a nationally known retailer, was an easy target. Worried about protecting their brand, L.L. Bean quickly acquiesced and pulled the cabin shaped bottles of syrup from their shelves and catalog.
Advertisement from 2000 for Log Cabin Syrup featuring a tall thin plastic bottle with a handle in the general shape of a log cabin.
Log Cabin Syrup was being sold in tall and narrow blow-molded plastic bottles, with decorative elements that gave it something of the shape of a log cabin. However, it in no way resembled the small squat cabin shaped of the Highland Sugarworks bottle or even to the cabin shaped tins used by the Log Cabin Syrup company many years before.
Examples of the Log Cabin Syrup commemorative cabin shaped metal banks with the 1971 version on the left and the 1979 version on the right.
In fact, the makers of Log Cabin Syrup had stopped selling syrup in their famous metal cabin shaped can in 1956, with the exception of a special limited edition commemorative tin issued in 1987 and toy banks in 1971 and 1979. Log Cabin issued another special edition cabin shaped tin in 2004.
On the left is the 1987 Log Cabin commemorative100 year anniversary cabin shaped tin, and on the right the 2004 special edition tin.
The attack on the Highland Sugarworks glass cabin was even more surprising considering that there was already a metal cabin shaped tin specifically designed and manufactured for packaging and selling maple syrup that had been on the market and available from the New England Container Company since 1984.
An early example of the New England Container Company cabin shaped metal tin that was introduced in 1984.
Rolie Devost, the owner of New England Container Co. at that time, shared in an interview that Aurora Foods made no effort or demands for an end to the manufacture and use of the New England Container Company’s metal cabin shaped can. Ironically, a few years later, Pinnacle Foods, Log Cabin Syrup’s next owner, contracted with New England Container to manufacture Log Cabin Syrup’s 2004 commemorative cabin shaped tin.
Besides Aurora’s claim that Highland Sugarworks benefitted from Log Cabin Syrup’s reputation by use of the cabin shaped bottle, Aurora’s claim of trademark infringement was simply false. It is true that years ago the Log Cabin Syrup name and logo were trademarked and that there have been various design patents for the earlier Log Cabin Syrup metal cabin shaped cans, but these have long ago expired. Based on current information, the various owners of the Log Cabin Syrup brand never held a trademark or copyright specifically on a cabin-shaped container.
It was surprising that Aurora Foods went after Highland Sugarworks when Highland Sugarworks was not even the manufacturer of the cabin bottle and did not hold the design patent. Highland Sugarworks was simply doing what many other syrup makers were doing, packaging, and selling their syrup in a cabin shaped bottle that was readily available to anyone to purchase for packaging and sale.
Examples of the three sizes of glass cabin shaped bottles in use over the years, 50 ml, 250 ml, and 750 ml.
At that time, these cabin shaped bottles, sometimes advertised as a “glass chalet,” were made by the famed glass makers, Vetrerie Bruni out of Milan, Italy. Bruni Glass was sold in 2015 and the cabin bottle is currently manufactured by Bruni Glass as a subsidiary of the Berlin Packaging Company in 50ml, 250ml, and 750ml sizes.
Not surprisingly, with the negative press and backlash that ensued from a large California based corporate food company wrongly attacking a small innocent Vermont family business, Aurora Foods quickly back peddled and by the end of the month had dropped their claims of trademark violation. In the end, the misguided efforts by Aurora Foods likely only hurt their brand and increased the popularity of the glass cabins and Highland Sugarworks’ sales of pure maple syrup.
Things didn’t get better for Aurora Foods, and one might speculate that their attack on Highland Sugarworks was a calculated distraction from the company’s other, much larger problems. The same week that Aurora Foods dropped its claim against Highland Sugarworks, it was announced that four of Aurora’s senior executives had resigned and the company was under investigation for serious accounting malpractice. As a result, its stock value plummeted from a normal $19 a share to $3 a share. The CEO subsequently pleaded guilty to fraud in 2001 and the company went into a bankruptcy restructuring in 2002, before merging with Pinnacle Foods in 2004.
This March 2023 contribution shares my research into the back story of the origins and history of an interesting collection of Native American wood and birch bark maple sugaring tools that were donated to the Tamarack Nature Center in Ramsey County, Minnesota for use in their maple syrup education program.
As discovered in research and interviews with surviving family members, the collection was acquired from the 1930s to the 1970s by a volunteer to the Nature Center who had a long association and friendship with a number of Ojibwe Indian families in east central Minnesota.
Dr. Patrick Charbonneau is a Montréal-born professor of chemistry at Duke University and a historian of the maple sugar confection known as sucre à la crème, or maple cream (candy). Maple Syrup History website creator Matthew Thomas (MT) recently had the pleasure of conducting the following email interview with Dr. Charbonneau (PC) which is designed to inform interested readers about Dr. Charbonneau’s corner of the world of maple syrup history, what he has learned, how that came to be, and where it is going.
—————————–
MT: We first became acquainted through your search for early recipes for sucre à la crème. Can you describe what sucre à la crème is and what makes it different from other maple sugar-based confections?
PC: First, thanks for your interest. I’m thrilled to be discussing this topic with you.
Sucre à la crème is a grained confection that was historically made of maple sugar and cream (or possibly other sources of milkfat). In a structural sense, it is akin to fudge, albeit without chocolate.
A tray of pieces of sucre à la crème. Courtesy of Duke News.
What differentiates sucre à la crème from other maple sugar-based confections is that most contemporary recipes for it use unrefined sugars that are not maple based, such as brown sugar. The connection of the confection with its maple sugar history has therefore been largely severed. Sucre à la crème is also special to me because my late great-aunt, who lived upstairs from my parents, used to make me some when I was young.
MT: Your primary areas of academic research and teaching are chemistry. How did you get interested in this topic and doing historical research?
PC: I have used sucre à la crème in countless courses and public demonstrations about the science of cooking. Contrasting it with soft caramel illustrates vividly (and tastefully) the importance of sugar microstructure on mouthfeel. In short, the grained confection is crumbly while the caramel is very sticky, even though we make the two from the same ingredients, mixed in the same proportions, and heated to the same temperature.
Making sucre à la crème. Courtesy of Keely Glass.
Therefore, when I was asked to contribute a chapter for the Handbook of Molecular Gastronomy, I immediately thought of writing something about sucre à la crème. Because the confection is not broadly known outside of the French-speaking northeast of the American continent, I also wanted to provide some cultural and historical context along with the technical presentation. When I started looking for related references, however, I was surprised by how little was known. What little I could find was not particularly convincing either. I therefore decided to plunge into the question myself.
MT: Although your research on the history of sucre à la crème is ongoing, what is the aim of your research?
PC: As I explained above, this project fell onto my lap by accident. As a result, its goal has long been somewhat undefined. That said, I quickly realized that one of the challenges of making sense of the history of sucre à la crème would be to disentangle it from that of related confections. Figuring out the confectionary landscape in which sucre à la crème emerged has therefore been my main objective thus far.
MT: Can you then tell us more about what else you are looking at and how that intersects with sucre à la crème research?
PC: While the history of fudge has been carefully documented from its emergence in the 1890s onward, that of other related confections have not.
My first article, which should soon appear in CuiZine, considered pralines made from nixtamalized corn coated with maple sugar. These confections were common frontier food in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence regions during the 18th and early 19th centuries, but they disappeared with the emergence of pemmican.
Eighteenth century cane sugar producers from contemporary Mexico also made a sucre à la crème-like confection, panochita de leche. The confection later spread to California and then to the rest of the US. It has since largely disappeared from Mexico, especially under that name, which (today) has a pornographic connotation [caution to readers if you google the term panochita you will bring up links to pornographic websites]. A history of this confection should soon appear in Gastronomica.
MT: I have found that most folks interested in maple history in the US do not speak or read French and that likewise, some in Quebec are not fluent in English. But then there are scholars like yourself who are fluent in both French and English. How has a mastery of both languages helped with your sucre à la crème research?
PC: It’s been essential. Honestly, I don’t know how one could do without.
MT: Out of curiosity, are there other languages you speak or read, besides French and English?
PC: I have some linguistic skills in Spanish and in Dutch. I learned the former through a couple of high-school and college classes, and the latter while a postdoctoral scholar in Amsterdam. By chance, these two languages have both been helpful in my study of grained confections in the Western world.
That said, I unfortunately do not have any linguistic skills in autochthonous languages. For the praline work, in particular, some notions of Iroquoian would have been handy. Although a linguist helped me out a bit, I’m not as confident about that aspect of the work as I wish I could be.
MT: As a chemist working in the physical sciences spending most of your time working on questions with relatively straightforward methods and results, do you find it difficult to put on your historian’s hat and navigate the use of more qualitative methods and the oftentimes inconsistent and incomplete historic record?
PC: Yes and no. Having done some family history work in the past, I have some ideas of the types of resources I might unearth. I also truly enjoy the chase. I get completely absorbed by looking for documents and other historical sources, and I enjoy visiting libraries and archives. Nowadays, a remarkable quantity of material can be tracked—and sometimes even found—online, which lowers the bar to exploring historical material broadly.
I nevertheless have some serious gaps in knowledge, and I have not been trained to write in that field. That’s one of the reasons I have collaborated with other researchers on all my projects thus far. Once my apprenticeship is completed, maybe I’ll risk going alone.
MT: Your research on the details of maple sugar related recipes in early North American cookbooks is fascinating and makes me wonder if you have considered writing a book that examines and documents the place of maple sugar in the foodways of North America from the 16th to the 19th centuries?
PC: The idea has crossed my mind, but I feel the existing scholarship on and around the topic is too thin to consolidate it in book form at this stage. Writing separate articles is also more compatible with my part-time engagement with the field. But maybe I’ll revisit this decision in a few years.
MT: Duke University is a bit outside the traditional range of maple syrup production, how has that affected your research? Do you have a favorite syrup supplier from Quebec or the US where you obtain your syrup?
PC: Great question! We always have maple syrup at home. My uncle’s neighbor on the chemin de la Presqu’île, just outside of Montréal, taps a few trees every year. Because my dad helps along, he brings home a few gallons. A couple of these makes it down to North Carolina every year.
MT: A fun part of studying historic recipes is attempting to try your hand at recreating and tasting the recipes of the past. Can you tell me more about your experiences working with old recipes? Is it difficult? Are there any successes or failures you can share?
PC: I haven’t done many recreations thus far, but my collaborators have. They are fortunately very talented, so they have figured ways out of whatever challenges they have met. For the panochita de leche paper, however, that took a few tries. The details of that struggle have even warranted their own publication, which should appear in that same issue of Gastronomica.
MT: Where can interested readers go to read more of your research on the history of the use of sugars and confections in the North American history?
PC: It should all be published at some point. I’ll make sure that a version of each of these articles is available on Duke’s institutional repository, which is accessible from my faculty page. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me by email if you have any questions.
Check the following sites in the near future for links to publication of Dr. Charbonneau’s sucre à la crème and other confection history related articles .
The archives of Paul Smith’s College has digitized and shared online a series of six films, originally shot in 16 mm color, that show various scenes of maple sugaring in the early 1960s.
When I contacted the archivists at Paul Smith’s to ask about the background on the films it was shared that very little was known. The films more or less appeared at the archives with no supporting information. It was not apparent who made the films, but in viewing, it was clear that the majority of the footage was made in New York state which suggested that possibly someone from the maple research program at Cornell University, or possibly maple equipment manufacturer Bob Lamb out of Liverpool, NY had made the films.
Bob Lamb’s May 15, 1961 Notice to tubing vendors – Courtesy of University of Vermont Archives.
I strongly suspected the films were shot by Bob Lamb considering he never personally appeared in any of the footage and the heavy emphasis on documenting only Lamb’s Naturalflow tubing with no examples of the other competing tubing product at the time.
My suspicions were confirmed when after a little sleuthing and digging in my research files from the Fred Laing folders of the maple research archives at the University of Vermont Special Collection turned up a notice from May 15, 1961 that was sent by Bob Lamb to the vendors that were selling his Naturalflow plastic tubing. In this notice Lamb writes:
A small group of us have been running 16 M.M. Colored movie cameras this spring over quite a wide spread area. We have tried to make the film a general “MAPLE FILM,” specializing in showing hundreds of miles of tubing and working right.
The film covers tubing, from taking tubing into the woods, tapping the trees, installing tubing, an (sic) disassembling, as well as washed and stored. The entire operation from start to finish. This portion is part of the Lloyd Sipple story. This part of the film is a wonderful way to show a prospect that has a great doubt as to what to do with tubing after he gets it. It will help others that want to improve their ways of using tubing.
None of the footage in the six films in the Paul Smith’s archives appears to be a single finished film that has been edited and prepared for distribution. Rather, it appears instead to be many minutes of raw footage, oftentimes showing the same general scene over and over. Also, as raw footage, some of the scenes appear to be underexposed and can be rather dark at times. it should also be pointed out that there is no audio with these digital films.
Announcement on page 11 of the November 1962 of the Maple Syrup Digest from Bob Lamb informing readers about the production and availability of a series of maple syrup films.
Subsequent research has located an advertisement placed by Bob Lamb in the November 1962 Maple Syrup Digest where he makes it known that he has filmed and prepared new films in 1962 in addition to his 1961 film and that these are available free, by request, for showing at maple meetings. He also notes the run time of the films, which are shorter than the Paul Smith’s footage, suggesting what he was offering were edited “finished” films and the Paul Smith’s films are the raw footage. Lamb also noted that none of these films had sound added at that time.
Based on the date and information in Lamb’s 1961 mailed out notice and 1962 Maple Syrup Digest ad, as well as the known date of the group photo at the Cooperstown meeting of the National Maple Syrup Council (1963), the footage in the films can be said to range from 1961-1963. Other elements and details in the footage, such as the packaging featured at the Reynolds Sugar Bush sales room, are consistent with this date range.
The six films feature various scenes and locations, mostly in New York but also in Ohio and Wisconsin. The bulk of the footage was shot at the sugarbush and sugar house of Lloyd Sipple in Bainbridge, New York. As mentioned in the quote from Bob Lamb’s notice, the focus of the footage is presenting Lamb’s Natural Flow plastic tubing in use so there are many minutes devoted to tapping and installing the tubing, checking tubing lines, and demonstrating tubing removal, dismantling and cleaning.
Because this was in the era when tubing was still new and evolving technology, it was recommended at the time that tubing should not be left hanging in the sugarbush and instead should be removed and meticulously cleaned and stored at the end of the season before being reinstalled the following winter. Likewise, it was the belief and recommendation of Bob Lamb at the time that his tubing should be laid across the ground or surface of the snow and not strung taunt at waist or chest height.
A number of individuals notable in the history of the maple industry and maple research are recognizable in the footage. These include sugarmaker and editor of Maple Syrup Digest, Lloyd Sipple of Bainbridge, NY; Dr. C.O. Willits of the USDA Eastern Regional Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA; Dr. Fred Winch of Cornell University; and Dr. James Marvin of the University of Vermont. There are also specific recognizable sugarbushes that appear in the footage, some brief, and some for many minutes. These include the Sipple’s Pure Maple Products in Bainbridge, NY ; Reynolds Sugar Bush in Aniwa, WI; Harold Tyler’s Maple Farm near Worchester, NY; Ray Norlin’s Central Evaporator Plant in Ogema, WI; Taylor Farm Sugar Camp in Stamford, NY; Keim’s Kamp Maple Products in West Salisbury, PA; and the Toque Rouge Sugar Camp in Quebec.
Below you will find links to the Paul Smith’s archive pages for all six of the films along with a few stills and comments noting some of scenes, people, locations, and highlights in each film. Click on the underlined title to be taken to the link to view each film.
Comments: Most of the film is repeated shots of a three person tapping crew installing Lamb tubing at Llyod Sipple’s sugarbush. Some scenes are at trees in the yard at his farm in front of the sugarhouse and others in the woods of the sugarbush.
The tapholes were being drilled using a King brand gasoline, backpack mounted power tapper followed by another man inserting an antimicrobial paraformaldehyde tablet into the tapholes before a third man inserted the plastic tap and attached tubing. Additional shots of tagged tapholes from previous years showing the effects on tap hole closure from treatment with Chlorox bleach versus paraformaldehyde tablets.
Other scenes include end of season removal process for plastic tubing including washing in a metal tank and rinsing with a pressure hose. Additional scenes are of gathering sap from roadside tanks by pumping into a tanker truck and a few shots of making maple candies in a candy kitchen.
Comments: Footage illustrating the process of installation of Lamb tubing in snow with the crew wearing snowshoes. Long drop lines installed at the tap holes were connected to lateral lines laid on the surface of the snow. A few shots of flushing freshly drilled tapholes with bleach solution prior to inserting plastic tap.
Shots of tanker truck delivering a load of fresh sap to Lloyd Sipple’s sugarhouse. Shots inside Sipple sugarhouse with Lloyd running three evaporators simultaneously. Additional views of Sipple filling N.Y.S. (New York State) one gallon metal syrup cans. There are short scenes of the Taylor Farm Sugar Camp in Stamford, New York, as well as a glimpse of the log cabin style sugarhouse in Burton, Ohio.
View of removal and cleaning of plastic tubing, followed by washing and coiling on reels for storage. On this removal day, Dr. C.O. Willits is seen observing and checking condition of tubing.
A short bit of footage of George Keim’s sugarhouse in Pennsylvania followed by views of sap being delivered to a sugarhouse in the unique Pennsylvania “double barrel” wooden sap gathering tank. Views of the tank being pulled by a team of horses then by a tractor. Some footage of candy making and filling candy molds.
Comments: many of the same general scenes as appear in other films in this group such as tapping and installation of tubing, inspection, removal, washing and storage. Notable shots of using paraformaldehyde pellet gun to insert pellet in taphole. Lloyd Sipple appears in footage working with installation crew.
Numerous views of the time consuming work of removal, washing, rinsing, and drying thousands of taps, drop lines, and fittings, and thousands of feet of tubing. Lateral lines and main lines were all removed and cleaned by hand and with pressurized water.
Additional footage of draining and drying tubing by stretching over roof of farm buildings before coiling on special rigs and storing in large rolls. Also a few moments of shots of women making maple candy and Lloyd Sipple maple granulated sugar in pot before sifting and packing into small jars.
Some viewers may recognize the view of the tanker truck pumping out a roadside collection tank as the source image for the artwork on the USDA Maple Sirup Producers Manualin the 1960s and 1970s. The original scene as appears in the film is a reverse of the artwork on the cover of the old maple manual.
Comments: Dr. C.O. Willits appears to monitor steam heated finishing evaporator at Sipple’s sugarhouse with other visitors looking on. Additional views of Lloyd Sipple standing alongside felt filters at the steam evaporators drawing off finished syrup.
Scenes of Dr. Fred Winch testing sugar levels in sap in the tank of a gathering truck using a hydrometers as well as an extended footage of Dr. Winch preparing sample dishes to measure bacterial growth in maple sap.
Short clip of attendees of 4th annual meeting of the National Maple Syrup Council assembled for group photograph in front of Fenimore Hall in Cooperstown, NY in 1963.
Comments: There are scenes of the inspection of Lamb Naturalflow plastic tubing, drop lines, lateral lines, and main lines running into sap collection tanks in the woods, including a short clip of Dr. James Marvin from the University of Vermont There is short section of footage at Harold Tyler’s Maple Farm, a 7,000 operation near Worchester, New York. Other short footage includes the log sugar house in Burton, Ohio that is part of the Geauga County Maple Festival.
The latter half of the film was shot at two sugarhouses in Wisconsin. There is about one minute of exterior and interior scenes show Ray Norlin’s brand new Central Evaporator Plant in Ogema, Wisconsin, which was built in 1962. Norlin’s was one of the first purpose built Central Evaporator Plants that made maple syrup almost exclusively from sap purchased from local sap gatherers rather than from sap gathered in a sugarbush owned or operated by the sugarmaker.
A substantial portion of this footage features the Reynolds Sugar Bush plant at Aniwa, Wisconsin during the boiling season.
There are scenes of sap being delivered and received by Juan Reynolds, both in large tanks drawn by a team of horses and in milk cans brought to the plant in the back seat of a car. Other scenes at the busy plant show an interior sales room with a enormous variety of syrup tins, bottles, as well as many shapes and designs of ceramic and plastic containers.
Other scenes show Adin Reynolds operating a syrup boiling tank as well as Lynn Reynolds describing one of the Reynolds’ large underground concrete syrup tanks located in their sugarbush.
Comments: Based on the style of architecture of the houses and cabins (notably flared eaves on the roof forms) the film was shot at a few sugarbushes and sugarhouses in Quebec including a visit to a sugarbush producing under the name of Toque Rouge (Red Cap) maple syrup.
Footage of Lamb tubing installations in Quebec at this time show it being widely adopted through the maple syrup world and Quebec sugarbushes were using the same layout and tubing design as in sugarbushes in the United States. One closeup of the text printed on the tubing reads Naturalflow – Montcalm, Quebec” showing the location where Lamb tubing for Quebec markets was being manufactured.
There are similar views of, installation, inspection of tubing lines that have already been hung and the trees tapped, as well as footage of breakdown and removal of the taps and plastic tubing using various designs for winding the tubing on reels or spools. Two sugarhouses in the film show large oil fired evaporators, fairly sophisticated for the early 1960s.
————————–
Special thanks to the folks at the Paul Smith’s College Joan Weill Adirondack Library Archives for taking the time and getting the funding necessary to convert these 16 mm films to digital format and make them available to the public to view on their library website.
