With January 23rd 2024 the beginning of a 10 day forecast of 30s and 40s daytimes highs, it gets us to thinking about 2012 when the maple syrup season was whole month early and we should have tapped in February instead of March. That got me to remembering the winter of 1877 where it was abnormally warm, farmers could plow ground all winter and one even planted his oats 2 months early in February rather than April.
I searched on newspapers.com to find information on the 1877 maple syrup season and found it to be poor, but also found this funny article about a beginner's maple tapping
From an April 1877 issue of the Lake Geneva Herald
Boring for Maple Sugar.
Mr. Sniffin relates his experience in boring for maple sugar as follows:
When I bought my present place the former owner offered, as one of the inducements to purchase, the fact that there was a superb sugar maple tree, and I made up my mind that I would tap it to manufacture some sugar. However I never did so until this year. But a few weeks ago I concluded to draw the sap and have what Mr Bangs calls "sugar bilin'." My wife's uncle was staying with us, and after inviting some friends to come and eat sugar, he and I got to work. We took the wash kettle down into the yard and pried some wood beneath it, and then he brought out a couple of buckets, to catch the sap, and the auger with which to bore a hole in the tree.
My wife's uncle said the bucket ought to be set about three feet from the tree, as the sap would spurt out with a good deal of force, and it would be a pity to waste any of it.
Then he lighted the fire, while I bored the hole about four inches deep. When I took the augur out the sap did not follow, but my wife's uncle said what it wanted was a little time, and so while we waited he put a fresh armful of wood on the fire. We waited half an hour, and as the sap didn't come, I concluded that the hole wasn't deep enough, so I began boring again; but I bored too far, for the augur went clear through the tree and penetrating the back of my wife's uncle, who was leaning up against the trunk trying to light his pipe. He jumped nearly ten feet, and I had to mend him up with court-plaster.
Then he said he thought the reason the sap didn't come was that there ought to be a kind of spigot in the hole so as to let it run off easily. We got the wooden spigot from the vinegar barrel in the cellar and inserted it. Then as the sap did not come, my wife's uncle said he thought the spigot must be jammed in so tight that it choked the flow; and while I tried to push it out, he fed the fire with some kindling wood. As the spigot could not be budged with a hammer, I concluded to bore it out with the augur, and meanwhile, my wife's uncle stirred the fire. Then the augur broke off short in the hole, and I had to go half a mile to get another one.
Then I bored a fresh hole, and although the sap would not come, the company did, and they examined with much interest that kettle, which was now red hot, and which my wife's uncle was trying to lift off the fire with the hay fork. As the sap still refused to come, I went over for Bangs to tell me how to make that exasperating tree disgorge. When he arrived he looked at the hole, then at the spigot, then at the tree. Then turning to me with a mournful face, he said:
“Suffia you have had a good deal of trouble in your life, and its done you good. It's made a man of you. This world is full of sorrow, but we must bear it without grumbling. You know that, of course. Consequently, now that I've some bad news to break to you, I feel's if the shock won't knock you endways, but'll be received with patient resignation. I say I hope you won't break down an' give way to your feeling when I tell you that there tree is no sugar maple at all! Grasaus! why that's Dack hickory! It is indeed, and you might as well bore for maple sugar in the side of a telegraph pole."
Then the company went home, and my wife's uncle said he had an engagement with a man in Hathborough, which be must keep right off I took the kettle up to the house, but as it was burned out, I sold it the next day for fifteen cents for old iron; and bought a new one for five dollars. I think now may be it's better to buy your own maple sugar.
