Turning tree sap into maple syrup
Spiles for Tapping Trees
Tapping involves making a shallow incision or hole to reach the sapwood layer about inches into the tree, where the sap flows by up to the tree’s crown. Native Americans inserted reeds or concave bark, later wooden and metal “spiles” (known by most as ‘taps’) were used. The sap was caught in a bucket, first made of bark, then wood, then metal. Today, the sap often runs through plastic tubing from tree to tree to a vat at the bottom of the hill. The amount of water in the sap is reduced by freezing and removing the ice, boiling, or the pressurized filtering technique called reverse osmosis.
Birch bark sap bucket and early wooden carved spile (tap) from American Indian collection; (Middle row) Wooden spile with hook for sap bucket; wooden spile in tree; (Bottom row) Modern plastic and metal spiles; historic wooden spiles.
Freedom Sugar in More Ways Than One
Sugar made from the sap of native northeastern sugar maps (Acer saccharum) was touted in the 1790’s as intrinsically American and an antidote to the slave-based (cane) sugar industry, embraced by many in New England as “Freedom Sugar.” This led to a bit of a maple sugar “bubble,” which was however soon supplanted by largely wholesale adoption of cane sugar from the West Indies, a slave plantation product. To this day the cane sugar industry is controversial in its environmental impacts and labor practices, which leads people to embrace other forms of sugar, including the (expensive) maple sugar.
From Leverett’s inception, its inhabitants engaged in sugaring as part of a diversified family farming/small industry economy. A farm might also have shops to saw wood or manufacture wood products, produce linen and/or wool, or press apple cider, and even blacksmith shops (then akin to the corner gas station or garage, where you could have your horse’s undercarriage repaired with new shoes). Both the North Leverett Sawmill and the Graves ironworks and forge were part of this type of economy during part of their history, and both were also, later in the nineteenth century, used to make commercial products as a single enterprise.
Compiled and written by Pleun Bouricius, Swift River Press Public History and Communications.
If you’d like to know more about Freedom Sugar, see Mark Sturges, “Bleed on, blest tree!,” Early American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Spring 2018), pp. 353-380. The link is to a J-Stor upload which you can access with your Boston Public Library e-card. All Massachusetts residents can get such a card to use the BPL’s online digital resources.”