The Parsons Family Syrup Making History
written by Dave Parsons, owner of Harwood Heritage Gold
How our Maple Syruping Began (1898 - 1940s)
Lots of Syruping Updates (1950s - 1990s)
Deciding to Continue the Family Tradition (2000 - today)
How our Maple Syruping Began (1898 - 1940s)
It all began with one large maple tree located in the middle of a field just west of the main Parsons farm house. My grandfather, George Parsons, tapped the tree, collected the sap, and boiled it down in an old hog kettle over an open fire. He rigged up a boom to swing the hog kettle over the fire to boil the sap, and to remove the kettle when the sap was close to syrup. The finishing was done by my grandmother in the kitchen, over the wood cook stove. The syrup they made was eaten by the family and used as a sugar substitute in cooking.
After a few years, George tapped several more maple trees across the road from the farm along the banks of Harwood Lake; this became the "sugar bush." Tapping took several days as it was all done by hand using a brace and bit; the process was very slow and a lot of hard work. You had to grab the wooden handle and crank the bit into the tree to drill the hole. The sap was then gathered in individual buckets which the family emptied into a large barrel on skids pulled through the woods by a horse. The boiling occurred over an open fire with one large flat pan without dividers or flues. The wood that they burned was gathered in and around the sugar bush. The sap was boiled down and when it was almost syrup, it was brought to the farm house to be finished off on the wood cook stove in the kitchen. There was no electricity or running water at this time. Canning jars housed the "liquid gold" that the family enjoyed throughout the year. (The family at this time was my Grandfather George, Grandmother Grace, Aunt Georgia, Aunt Jane and William, my father.)
William, my dad, worked hard as a young man to increase maple syrup production. As he took over the family farm, syruping was a part of the farm he developed further. Dad built a little arch into a side hill; it was only about knee high and was made out of cement and lined with brick. For the chimney, he welded together five-gallon metal cans. He always made do with what he had. On top of the arch sat the same flat pan used by my grandpa. Eventually, dad purchased a flat pan with dividers. We began the sap boiling in the front pan, then a siphon took this syrup as it thickened into the middle pan where more boiling and thickening took place. Again, this sap was siphoned to the back pan where the final boiling occurred.
We began by using this boiler outside, and eventually dad built a little sap house around it, just big enough for boiling. Two sap storage tanks sat outside. The floor to the sap house was dirt. As spring evolved, the floor became very muddy. Because of the location of the sap house, spring thawing always brought water running right through the middle of it. All of us kids had to be very careful when entering. We did not have a steam hood, so the steam coming off of the pans only left through the roof. You could barely see from one end of the small room to the other. With all of the water, the floor could be very slippery and the low arch made it a dangerous place for kids; we could have easily fallen into the boiling sap.
Dad usually sat in the corner of the sap house on a little three corner bench that he built. He would fire up the arch and sit waiting as the sap boiled. I can remember spending time with him whittling while he waited. We whittled whistles, bats and other objects out of soft wood. Many times we would bring eggs that we had gathered from the chicken coop to the sap house. We would place the eggs into the sap to boil. They were easy to put in the pan and to retrieve because of the low arch. Maple flavored hard boiled eggs were a special treat.
The syrup continued to be processed in the farmhouse kitchen. By this time, mom had a combination gas and wood stove. She placed a flat pan on the stove to do the final boiling. She would do the final filtering of the syrup through a large felt filter. She placed two kitchen chairs back to back with sticks holding the filters in place between the chairs, then she poured the syrup through the filters. She canned the syrup mostly into canning jars for the family use. We used between twelve to fifteen gallons a year. Dad ate pancakes most mornings for breakfast and he loved his maple syrup. The extra syrup was canned into tin containers and sold.
Even though Dad had taken over the farm, Grandpa lived next door and helped with the chores whenever he could. Making syrup was a time he enjoyed and always participated in. One day after boiling all day, Dad and Grandpa fired up the arch and hiked up to the farm to milk the cows, to do the chores and eat supper. When they returned to the sugar bush, the sap house was found burned to the ground. The pans had not burned up because they were filled with sap. That spring they finished boiling sap in the open air, and during the summer they rebuilt the sap house.
1898 - 1940s | 1950s - 1990s | 2000 - today
