Sugaring in Quebec 1840

Here is an English translation of an excerpt from the narrative text

This virtually unknown text sheds light on the activities of the first people who made maple syrup. Whoever wrote it was the witness.

By sugaring, we mean all the operations that includes the manufacture of maple sugar, and by extension, the time of year when the sugar should be done. This time varies depending on whether the spring is more or less lazy, but the season usually runs the last two weeks of March in the first half of April.

As soon as favorable weather has arrived, we began to make the necessary preparations. We manufacture spiles or spiles, which are small gutters cedar, split with the gouge, nine or ten inches in length and a width of two inches and a thickness of about two lines. On one side they are beveled so that they can fit exactly into the hole with the edge of the gouge in the sap of maple. This task is often left to children. I split and sharpened these good spiles, when I was young, long ago! Just thinking about it, it reminds me of the pungent scent of cedar that brings me back forty years and gave me before my eyes those beautiful days of childhood in the countryside, where we took our free frolicking at in the large air and under the sun!

When spiles are prepared, we strap the snowshoes to visit and bring order to the sugar shack which were stored at the end of last season, the tubs, the berry flats, boilers, mussels, and Mouvet other vessels of sugar. It opens the big door and enters with smoky pleasure in this little nook where elapsed time already so good. Tubs and berry flats are cleaned, the large boilers scoured, barrels, and cans and mussels rinsed with water. Then we prepare the provision of wood, dry trees including maple, cherry, beech, hemlock, etc.. that it delivers and that is piled near the cabin. All this work took about ten days.

Finally, one morning, the sugar bowl, after long consultations with clouds and sun, said that the day is good for hacking. shoes are new rackets, and they joyfully rushed into the forest. There was a frost overnight, the crust is moving fast and there. The sugar has his ax, his chisel and mallet, and children on sleds working on large packet spiles, I assure you it is not heavy to pull. Arrived in the wood, are distributed here and there spiles and then will load the sleds and berry flats tubs.

We attack the first tree in a solemn moment. We choose a favorable location, near the south or southwest, diagonally and is practiced in the bark and sapwood, about a foot and a half above the ground, a small notch in focus. The height of art is to complete the notch in two blows. Above is pricked with the chisel and the mallet and the spout is fixed in the sting, tilting a little, then we establish the tub or berry flats under the lower end of the spout. The Maple tree is now doing his duty by running its generous sweet sap.

It has now been almost everywhere although furnaces installed in a real house, with costly utensils. But I prefer the old hut. The hut is made of tree trunks stacked with a single slope roof that forms at the front, above the front door, a canopy of six or seven feet. It was under this canopy that moves the home: two forked stakes securely in the ground, a large crossbar provided with hooks which are suspended wood boilers, is the whole installation. When boilers are installed and filled with sap, it lights the fire underneath, and there is more to maintain the fire and fill up as evaporation occurs.

When the sap has acquired a beautiful brown color and a consistency slightly less than the regular syrup, it forms what is called reduced. This reduces, after being poured through a thick flannel is placed in large cans or cask, and then, when it has sufficient quantities, it is on fire again, this time without adding water to make syrup or a brew.

It is the most delicate operation of manufacturing sugar, here the children are no longer allowed to watch and it takes a human expert, a real sugarer. The fireplace burns night and day, and ensure each other while resting. It foams, stir, are prevented from inflating. If you want to make syrup, we remove the boiler from the heat when the liquid line, that is to say when it falls on the Mouvet without forming droplets. For sugar, it lasts longer. It was the first shoot, which is a thick syrup, which becomes brittle when left to cool on the snow. That’s when it’s good to eat and the kids will smear mouth what do you want.

Another half-hour or three quarters of an hour, and the contents of the boiler offers bubbling with hints of dark gold, similar to eruptions that can be seen on the surface of the sun, we see that the pull becomes grainy. There was also the only dive Mouvet in the liquid, and if, then blowing through the hole at its end, it produces a small bubble perfectly clear and brittle, sugar is almost cooked; after some time, removed from heat. When he cooled down a bit, and you see a light crust will form on the surface, we hasten to put in wooden molds we moistened with the sap, he n ‘there is more to crystallize and take leave in rolls.

The five hundred maples gave about five hundred pounds of sugar and several gallons of syrup. We were rarely alone in the hut. Each day of merry men who came were eating the dip, hot sugar, or eggs cooked in syrup. The same evening, there were vigils with their good stories, and the merry laughter rose in the solemn silence of the tall trees.

The original text in French is here, it undoubtedly reads better (if you can read French):