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.
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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.
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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.
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.
This contribution examines the history and details surrounding the formation and operation of the St. Paul Syrup Refining Company, a syrup blending company that operated in St. Paul Minnesota from the 1880s to the 1920s under the brand name of Canada Sap Maple Syrup. Of course, one is left to wonder how much, if any, pure maple syrup went into their blended syrups.
Following on the model of their competitor and St. Paul neighbor, Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup, the St. Paul Syrup Refining Company utilized flashy and colorful marketing and interesting packing to sell blended syrup to consumers throughout the western United States and from the maple syrup producing regions.
Modern example of the oval syrup flask with the little round handle.
When thinking of iconic symbols or popular images related to the maple syrup industry, one that quickly comes to mind is the glass flask shaped syrup bottle with the little round handle on the neck. Use of this bottle is unique to the maple industry and is instantly associated with pure maple syrup. About ten years ago a blog post claimed that the appearance or continued presence of the small handle on the neck of this bottle was a hold-over or an artifact of past designs for syrup jugs. Such elements are something known as a skeuomorph, “a retained but no longer functional stylistic feature.” The same Brooklyn Brainery blog writer went on to say “that the handles are a remnant from when most jars were large earthenware containers. The handle’s useful when you’re carrying five pounds of liquid, but not so much when you can easily grab the whole bottle in the palm of your hand.”
Perhaps, a better explanation comes from Jean-François Lozier, a Curator at the Canadian Museum of History, who was quoted online in a Canadian Reader’s Digest article to say, “maple syrup companies weren’t so much retaining an old pattern of a jug as reinventing it and wanting to market their product as something nostalgic.” Lozier, went on to add, “they were tying in the image of maple syrup with their product and the image that people still had of those crocks in the 19th-century.”
Drawing for Brooks D. Fuerst’s 1951 design patent for the oval syrup flask (USD162147).
While it is true that the little handles on the bottles have the appearance of being something of a holdover or throwback design element that was intended to show a connection to bottles and jugs of the past, the fact is that we really do not know why the bottle was designed with a little handle. What we do know is who first designed and manufactured that bottle, and by what company and when the bottle was first used for selling maple syrup. Brooks D. Fuerst of Sylvania, Ohio, was awarded with the design patent (USD162147) for the bottle in February 1951, after applying for the patent in June of 1949.
Image of a young Brooks D. Fuerst.
Brooks Fuerst (1905-1998) was an experienced designer of glass bottles and jars for food and liquid packaging and worked extensively with the Owens-Illinois Glass Company and the Libbey Glass Company, both in Toledo, Ohio, a place that is sometimes called the Glass Capital of the World.
The design for the syrup flask with the little handle on the neck was given the uninspiring title of “jug or the like” and it should be noted that the shape of the small handle on the original design was not actually rounded, but was more angular with two sharp corners. Brooks Fuerst assigned the patent to the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, either through sale, contract, or as an employee of the company.
Early examples of Cary’s Maple Syrup in the 1951 Fuerst bottle. On the left a 8.5 ounce bottle and on the right a small 2.0 ounce sample size bottle.
The Fuerst flask was first used in 1950 by the Cary Maple Sugar Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 2-ounce, 8-ounce, and 24-ounce sizes. At that time, the Cary company used the flask to bottle two kinds of syrup. One was their Cary’s 100% Pure Maple Syrup, the other was their Highland Brand blended syrup, a mixture of cane and maple syrup.
Advertisement from a 1950 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine for Highland Syrup, featuring the Brooks D. Fuerst bottle.
Prior to the introduction of the Cary’s brand pure maple syrup in 1948, the Cary Maple Sugar Company had used the Highland brand for bottling pure maple syrup since 1919. Highland brand blended syrup continued in use to the mid-1960s and appears to have been discontinued after the Childs-Fred Fear Company sold the Cary’s brand to HCA-Doxsee Foods in 1966. The Cary’s brand of maple syrup continues to be sold to this day by B & G Foods.
Advertisement for Cary’s Maple Maker concentrated syrup – May 1953 Los Angeles Times.
The Cary Maple Sugar Company also used the 8-ounce Fuerst flask from 1953 to 1957 to sell their unique “Maple Maker” a highly concentrated maple syrup in which one ounce of concentrate mixed with water and refined white sugar would produce 16 ounces of maple flavored table syrup. This product was aimed at a cost-conscious buyer that wanted to enjoy “home-made” maple flavored syrup at a fraction of the cost of 100% pure maple syrup.
This was not the first design for a maple syrup bottle by a Fuerst. In fact, Brooks Fuerst’s older brother Edwin W. Fuerst (1903-1988) designed a similar bottle over 15 years earlier. It should be noted that, then and to this day, design patents were protected for 14 years.
Image of Edwin W. Fuerst.
With Edwin W. Fuerst’s earlier design, the patent was applied for in December 1932 before obtaining former approval in February 1933. Like with the 1951 syrup flask, the 1933 design patent (USD89301) was assigned to the manufacturer, Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Also, like the 1951 design, the first maple syrup company to use the design was the Cary Maple Sugar Company, this time in 2, 8, 12, and 24-ounce sizes. Edwin Fuerst, like his younger brother, was an experienced commercial artist that lived in Toledo and worked closely with the Owens-Illinois and Libbey Glass companies. Like Brooks Fuerst, Edwin was awarded dozens of design patents for artistic glass containers as well as attractive cut glass tableware from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Drawing for Edwin W. Fuerst’s 1933 design patent for the round syrup flask (USD89301).
The design of Edwin Fuerst’s 1933 syrup bottle, was titled “design for a jug.” It had a rounder shape to the body than the 1951 bottle and also featured a virtually identical, small, seemingly useless angled handle at the neck. The 1933 bottle featured a thick rectangular base that made it much heavier and more stable than the later more oval flask design. In contrast, the later 1951 flask features a series of short decorative vertical flutes or concave scallops near the base which were absent from the earlier bottle.
Advertisement for Cary Maple Sugar Company’s Highland Maple Sap Syrup featuring Edwin Fuerst’s round bottle – January 1937 Chicago Tribune.
It is not known for sure, but it appears that the Cary Company may have had exclusive rights to use both the 1933 and the 1951 designs during the beginning years of the manufacturing of these bottles. However, we do know that Quebec Maple Products, LTD out of Lennoxville, Quebec, also used this design as early as 1935 with their Old Colony brand syrup. Quebec Maple Products, LTD was owned by Robert Boright who had a close history with the Cary Company, first as the manager of their Quebec plant, then as the temporary company president following the death of George Cary in 1931.
Examples of Highland Maple Sap Syrup bottles. 12 ounce bottle on left and smaller 2..0 ounce sample size bottle on right.
In fact, considering that the 1933 design was in the works and initially submitted for a patent in 1932 during the period that Boright oversaw the Cary Company operations, it is possible that it was Boright’s idea and initiative to introduce the new bottle.
Ontario newspaper advertisements for Quebec Maple Products, LTD use of the Edwin Fuerst bottle. Old Colony advertisement on left from February 1935 The Windsor Star and Old Tyme Syrup on the right from October 1958 The Windsor Star.
When Boright left the Cary company and started his own Quebec Maple Products, LTD in 1933, he certainly had the inside scoop on the availability of the new design. And as far as can be seen, Quebec Maple Products, LTD only used the 1933 bottle for sale of their syrup within Canada, so they likely would not have been competing with the Cary company in the US or violating exclusivity agreements or US patent laws. Quebec Maple Products LTD continued to use the 1933 round bottle design well into the 1960s with their Old Colony and Old Tyme Brand syrups.
Examples of two different containers of Little Brown Jug Syrup. The ceramic container from 1920s is on left and the 1930s glass design with the loop handle on the neck is on the right.
The 1933 Fuerst bottle curiously resembles another bottle introduced in the 1930s, that of Little Brown Jug syrup out of St. Louis, Missouri. When Little Brown Jug blended syrup was introduced in 1921 or 1922, it originally came in a ceramic container shaped like a thick round disc on its side with a large loop handle on the shoulder. That design (USD61415) was patented by Joseph Klein in 1922. Around 1934 the Little Brown Jug Products Company shifted to a brown glass bottle in a design that was similar to their earlier ceramic design, with the addition of some notable differences, which happened to make their glass jug very similar to the 1933 round jug of Fuerst, such as a round loop handle on the neck and a thick glass ring or ridge at the juncture of the neck and shoulder. Surprisingly, the glass version of the Little Brown Jug, which only appears in advertisements from 1934 onward, is embossed with the design patent number of their earlier, and different, ceramic jug. One would think the Little Brown Jug company would have also obtained a patent on their new, slightly modified, glass design, unless they were concerned with accusations of copying Fuerst and instead wanted to reply on the precedent of their earlier design patent. It is also possible that Fuerst did the design for the glass version of the Little Brown Jug, and a design patent was never applied for. So far, research has yet to uncover a patent specific to the 1930s design of the Little Brown Jug.
Interestingly, a check of the 1926 and the 1933 catalogs for the Owens- Illinois Glass Company shows the same reinforced ridge or ring at the neck was standard design element for loop handled bottles and jugs at that time.
Use of the 1951 Fuerst bottle by the maple industry in 1960s and 1970s was primarily limited to the large packing companies with national sales and shelf space in grocery chains. It was rarely offered for sale in the catalogs of maple equipment dealers. It wasn’t until the 1980s, with the growing availability and appreciation of specialty glass containers that the flask bottle became a popular option with individual maple producers. By the mid-1990s, the handle design evolved from an angular shape to its current rounded form, finalizing the shape we easily identify today as a symbol of real maple syrup.
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.
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.
