Our Family’s History Of Making Maple Syrup (Part One)

By Elizabeth Drudge

When my ancestors came to Vaughan Township, Ontario, Canada in 1797, the land they bought was covered with huge pine trees. The pine trees were 150 feet tall, and 4 feet or more in diameter. The settlers cleared the land and used this wonderful pine timber to build log barns, homes and sheds. My ancestor, Jonathon Baker, Sr., was born in 1792 in Somerset, PA and bought his own farm in Vaughan Township in 1816. This farm was passed on from one generation to the next, and this is where I grew up. Jonathon had 200 acres on this farm. He cleared 100 acres, and left an 80 acre woodlot along the east side, and a 20 acre woodlot along the west side. The eighty acre woodlot always contained the best trees for making Maple Syrup.

When the settlers came, there were some hard maples in among these huge pine trees, and as the pines were cut down for lumber, the maple gradually took over. The pioneers began to make maple syrup right away, as it was their only source of sugar. The old wills of my ancestors mentioned the maple syrup equipment to be passed on. Another ancestor, John Reaman came from Somerset County, PA in 1800 and bought the farm across the road from Jonathon Baker. In John Reaman’s will, written in 1832, he says that his wife, Mary, is to be well cared for, and among other things, was to receive yearly 25 pounds of good maple sugar. At one time, almost every farm in that area had a maple sugar operation. The Agriculture census for 1842 says that 36,880 pounds of maple sugar were made in Vaughan Township that year.

Jonathon Baker, Jr., my great-grandfather, began to keep records in 1838 of the maple sugar seasons. He wrote down what day they started in the Spring, which day they finished up, how many trees they tapped, and how much maple sugar they made. 1842 was not a good year, because the snow was so very deep, deeper than any of the settlers had seen up until then. 1844 was a very good season, with about 4 pounds of maple sugar to a tree. In 1857 their eight best trees together yielded 64 pounds of maple sugar, so that was a very good year, as they had a lot more than just 8 trees tapped. In 1860 Jonathon writes that a few more trees were tapped, so that more maple syrup could be made, as well as maple sugar, and he recorded the amounts of syrup made each year, as well. From 1816 on, they made maple syrup every year except 1874, when they had an ice storm which broke down so many trees that they were not able to get the bush cleaned up in time to make syrup.

Our family has made syrup continuously in Ontario every year ever since they came in 1797, with the exception of that one year. In 1870, Jonathon Baker tapped 70 trees. One hundred years later, in 1970, my brother, Paul Baker was tapping 7000 taps from the same woodlot, and by 1980, he had increased to 8000 taps. Homemade wooden sap buckets were used for over a hundred years. I have a few of those wooden sap buckets used by my ancestors and also have a few of the wooden spiles. The wooden spiles are about 12 inches long. This is because the wooden buckets sat on a wooden stand on the ground, and the spile had to be long enough to drip into the bucket, because the bottom of the trunk sloped out. My grandfather, Jesse Baker, bought the first tin buckets around 1900.As a little girl, I remember playing around on the stones in the bush where the kettles had been for boiling syrup years ago. In 1911, Grandfather built a new sugar camp near where the kettles had been.

He bought his first evaporator, a pan two and a half feet by nine feet. He tapped 250 trees at this time, using the homemade wooden buckets and some tin ones. My father, Amos Baker, gradually tapped more and more trees. The sugar camp was at the edge of the woodlot, about 50 rods from the house. They carried the maple syrup into the house in pails, using a wooden yoke which hung on their shoulders. The yoke had two ropes down, and a wooden hook on each rope, which you hooked onto the pail handle. Daddy used to deliver syrup to town, in large tin containers. He had a metal gallon measuring can and a half gallon measuring can along. When the customer stated how much syrup they wanted, Daddy filled the gallon container, and emptied it into their own container. I have several of these metal gallon containers that Daddy used years ago.

In the spring of the year, the snow is very deep to start with, and by the time the sap is running the best, the bush is a sea of mud. So getting through with the tractor was always a challenge. There was one area of the woodlot that was more hilly, so it had never been tapped. In the 1940’s, Daddy thought of a way to tap this hilly area. He set up a system of underground pipes which ran down to the camp.

He built galvanized funnels that held ten gallons apiece, with screens and hinged covers, and screwed these funnels into the pipes. Now he had a series of funnels, as dumping stations, and they gathered the sap and dumped it into these funnels, along the underground pipeline. It worked great, because a good percentage of the trees could be gathered this way, and it saved taking the tractor and wagon tanks through all the muddy trails. Also, one man could gather this hilly area alone, while the rest gathered with the tractor and wagon tanks. At that point, Daddy had 2000 buckets, so gathering sap took a lot of time, even in those places where he still used the tractor. As a little girl, I used to help gather this pipeline.

Back at the Sugar Camp was were the most fun was. We had a large, wood fired evapourator. It was a lot of work keeping wood in the fire and carrying in wood from the big wood shed just outside. Weenjoyed having our meals there, and just being in the steamy sweet-smelling atmosphere was so exciting. We used to hurry home from school and run out to the camp as fast as possible.

In the late 1950’s plastic tubing was a new idea. In 1959, Daddy tapped 40 trees using plastic lines. He was one of the pioneers in the plastic tubing experiments, and worked closely with the companies that were making the tubing. Daddy was quite an inventor, and he designed many of the methods that are used for gathering sap with plastic lines. The company that made the tubing came out to our place many times, as they knew that Daddy had many good ideas. He also designed some of the vacuum systems. In 1960, we tapped 1000 trees with plastic lines, as well as the 2000 buckets. In a few years, we had everything on plastic lines, and only about 100 buckets around the camp where we needed to be able to drive through. By using plastic lines, we were able to expand and tap more and more of the large eighty acre woodlot, until it was all being tapped.

Then a new problem appeared. Soon we began to have trouble with squirrels biting holes in the tubing. This slowed down the vacuum that was needed to keep the lines moving. Why were the squirrels interested in biting the tubing? Were they attracted to the bubbles going by in the lines? The companies had no solution, but Daddy came up with an idea that worked. He took red hot cayenne pepper and mixed it with shellac, and painted it on the plastic tubing where it went around the tree.

That stopped the squirrels and chipmunks pretty fast. One day Paul found a tiny bite in the cayenne-shellac covered line, and down on the ground was a squirrel’s nest, which a squirrel had recently plled out of the tree from a hole higher up. Paul figured the squirrel got a hot mouth, and in frustration, had kicked its nest all out!

Daddy and Paul used this mixture with good results for many years. Since the shellac tended to flake off, someone went around and re-painted or touched up the lines every Spring. About 20 years later, when the original tubing needed to be replaced, it seemed like the squirrels didn’t bother biting the new tubing, so Paul didn’t need to use the cayenne pepper anymore. Maybe the squirrels had all learned their lesson by then.

One of the first jobs each spring was to ‘blaze’. They took a hatchet and blazed the area where they intended to bore the hole. This ‘blazing’ took off a small area of the rough outer bark, and made a nice smooth area to bore the hole, so the metal spile would fit snug and the bucket would hang straight. The man who did the blazing, needed to look carefully at the tree, and notice where the spile had been last year and the year or two before, and blaze a new area far enough from the other holes, so that the new hole would be in an area of new wood. Now with the new plastic spiles that are much smaller, we no longer blaze in the spring.

For 150 years, a brace and bit was used to bore the hole for the spile. As more and more trees were being tapped, using a brace and bit was a long and tiresome job. In 1956, Daddy bought a tree tapper. Although it was a big improvement, the tree tapper was heavy and awkward. It was a small engine mounted onto an aluminum frame that a man carried on his back. It was strapped around his shoulders. Someone helped to lift it onto your back, and then started the engine. There was a flexible rubber hose which carried the spinning shaft with a drill bit on the end. This was held in your hand, and now you could make the holes for the spiles. Walking through the deep snow, carrying this heavy machine on your back, was tiresome, so the men traded off about every hour. As the years went by, newer tree tappers were invented, which were lighter and more convenient, which has made the job easier.

When I was young, we sold most of the syrup in round tin gallon pails, with a handle. We also filled some half gallons and quarts. The lowest price I remember is $5.00 a gallon and $2.50 a half gallon. Then I remember when the price went up to $8.00 a gallon. Daddy always said that the way they decided on the price of syrup, was that a gallon of syrup was the same price as a day’s wages. But I know that comparison would not hold true today, as I know that many of our syrup customers today are making far more per day than what we charge for a gallon of syrup. Too bad we could not have kept up using that equation!

Daddy and Paul, as well as our ancestors, were very diligent in taking care of the woodlot. They kept the junk trees cut out, and gave lots of space to growing, healthy maple trees. Some of the same trees were tapped ever since 1816, so there were some very large trees in this bush. A healthy tree with a large top has sweeter sap. In June, the leaves of the trees absorb sugar from the sun, and send it down to the roots, to be stored there until the next spring, when the sweet sap is sent up the trunk, to form the new leaves. So, if there are lots of sunny days in June, the sap will be sweeter next year. And if a tree has a large, branchy top, it will have more surface of leaves to collect the sugar from the sun, so the sap will be sweeter from a tree with a good top. This is also why trees out in the open, like along a lane, or in the yard, will have sweeter sap than most trees in the woodlot.

Since it took a lot of extra help in syrup season, Daddy hired local boys to help for a few weeks in the spring. One year, he hired a charming young man, called John Drudge, who lived about 20 miles east of us. So John and I became acquainted in the sugar camp! Here our friendship started, and we were married in 1967.

When we got married, we started to make maple syrup every spring, too, here on our own farm. So the story of making Maple Syrup for 48 years here with our family will be Part 2.

To read Part Two of family history click here.