History of Vermont's Maple Sugar Industry
9781465685452
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
To the Green Mountain State belongs the honor of furnishing the Maple its safest refuge and best home. Here it grows in all its beauty and luxury of foliage. Here too, as the frosts of fall settle upon our maple forests has the painters tried to copy and place upon canvas the picture as the glossy green leaves turn to red and gold. Once it reigned supreme as King of the forests of Vermont. Thousands of acres once occupied by the sugar maple have been cleared for agriculture, and the maple like the dusky warrier has gradually been driven back to the hills. Sugar maples have been transplanted to some extent in France, Germany, Austria and England, with a view to adding sugar making to their many lines of industries, but without satisfactory results. Of all the trees of the forest the maple was the most valuable to the early settlers. Its wood furnished the best fuel for their greedy fireplaces. Also in the early days a considerable income was derived from the burning of charcoal, and the maple made the best of material for this. But even more than for all these purposes it lost its life in the manufacture of potash. Not alone was the settlers’ great iron kettles used for boiling down the sap of the maple into sugar, but were principally used for boiling down the lye leached from wood ashes into potash thus deriving a large income, although it resulted in the same old story of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. But alas! Not alone did the people of years gone by destroy and lay waste our maple groves. The maple worm for several years stripped our trees of their foliage, and bid fair to make sugaring a thing of the past. But worst of all at the present time are the veneer mills, which pay large prices for maple logs. And unless some means be found to induce the farmer to spare his maple grove, the maple Sugar industry of Vermont, like the Indian Brave who roamed at will beneath their shade will have passed from among us. Well may we cherish this grand old tree and be proud of sending forth to the world an article which in its purity and delicacy of flavor is unsurpassed by any sweetness otherwise produced.
