noise."Story Notes: Spring Comes to Snow Hill · 4:44am Mar 4th, 2018
Story Notes: Spring comes to Snow Hill (Blog 2 of 3)
First off, a big thanks to my pre-readers! MSPiper, AShadowOfCygnus, and metallusionismagic!
The process of gathering sap and producing maple syrup has changed somewhat over the years, of course, but in principle remains the same process as the indigenous people of North America used.
During early spring, cycles of days above freezing followed by nights below freezing cause maple trees (and presumably, other trees as well) to begin sending sweet sap up their trunk to allow the branches to bud. A puncture of some sort is made in the trunk—originally, slits in the bark; nowadays, a hole—and the sap is collected in buckets.
It's then boiled down in a saphouse or a sugar shack to drive off all the moisture. According to wikipedia, generally 20-50 gallons of sap equal one gallon of syrup. Obviously, the higher the sugar content of sap, the less you need.
Over time, the process has been refined, from birch buckets and boiling over an open fire, to vacuum tube systems that go right to the saphouse. Spiles (the little pipe that goes into the tree) have also evolved, from wood to cast iron to aluminum. And the evaporating process has gone from birch pans that had hot rocks put in them, to specialized flat evaporators.
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In the early spring, when it was getting time for the sap to flow, a team of horses would 'break out.' They'd force their way down snow-bound roads and paths through the woods, in order to access the maple grove.
If the roads were wide enough, they might use a snow-roller to further compact the snow, which would make it easier for the team of horses, and would give a smooth path for the sledge to travel along.
Trees would be bored and spiles put in, generally one in trees with a diameter of 12 inches or less, two in a tree with a diameter of 24 inches, and more in bigger trees. Speaking from personal experience, most of the mature trees I've seen at nearby sugaring operations have three or more spiles in them.
A bucket hangs from the spile, to collect the sap, and a sheet-metal lid is placed over it, to keep snow and other debris out of them. It also probably discourages most small animals that might want to get at the sweet sap.
The buckets are emptied as often as needed. A mature maple tree can produce up to three gallons per day (12 liters), and they generally produce 9 to 13 gallons per season (35-50 liters).
If it's not processed right away, the sap should be kept cold so that bacteria doesn't ruin it. Larger operations would generally have a tank that was kept around freezing for this purpose; since sap season is at the end of winter, just being outside and not in the sun would normally be good enough. Snow could be piled over it for further insulation if needed.
When it comes time to process, since the idea is to drive most of the water off, the larger the surface area of pan the better. By the mid 19th century, specialized boilers had been invented that were large, flat pans with a firebox underneath, and this was a great improvement on the old method of heating it in kettles over an open fire (or putting hot rocks in birch pans, for that matter).
That process of course was quite steamy, so saphouses normally had louvered gables to let all the steam escape.
Multiple interconnected tanks let the sap be pre-heated in the first tank, concentrated in intermediate tanks, and then finished in a final tank. Also, during the process some unwanted impurities rise to the surface, where they can be skimmed off and discarded.
Traditionally, balsalm fir was used to help keep the foaming down. Other fats and oils were also used depending on availibility; bacon fat and butter were both fairly common.
Depending on the operation, the syrup might be filtered and bottled right off the finishing tank, or it could be cooled and stored indefinitely before being finished. As with the concentrating process, the sap is boiled to a certain specific gravity (wikipedia says 66° on the Brix scale), and then it gets filtered and bottled.*
Commercial entities tend to use specific bottles; commercial operations normally use either maple-leaf shaped bottles or jugs with little handles on them** [or in some cases, other specialty designs, like the log-cabin shaped metal cans that Log Cabin syrup used to come in]. However, for a smaller operation, any glass bottle will do.***
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*Some operations pre-concentrated the sap by letting it freeze, and picking out the ice. The general wisdom is that that removes some essential elements from it, and proper syrup isn't made that way; I was unable to find any actual study that showed if sap made that way was meaningfully different from non-frozen syrup.
**The little handle is a leftover from when syrup was stored in large, earthenware jugs.
***When I was a kid, we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Ontario that made maple syrup; they stored it in empty liquor bottles.
It should be readily apparent why most of the ponies have the names that they do. Winter Berry is named after Winterberry (holly), and Bar Berry is named after Blue Cohosh, which can be used to induce labor.
Back in the days before commercial refrigeration, ice was gathered off lakes and ponds in the wintertime, and it was stored in icehouses. It was then delivered to customers for use in home iceboxes, to railroads for use in refrigerator cars, and anywhere else that needed ice.
A hearth room is the room in a house with the hearth (fireplace) in it. The term has fallen out of use, at least in the US. There are more details about this particular choice in my previous blog post.
Back before there were tanker trucks, milk was put into metal cans that were then taken to the train station, where they would be loaded on a special train (this is where the phrase 'milk run' comes from) that would take them to the creamery. Or, if the dairy farm in question wasn't near railroad tracks, they would be taken in milk jugs by wagon.
Wooden runners, whether they be on a sledge or a pair of skis, work better when they're waxed. There are different waxes which are used for different types of snow. I don't know much about the technicalities of that, but I remember when I was a kid I was kind of jealous how my mom got to put wax on her skis, while mine didn't take any wax at all. It came in little jars, and the wax was different colors.
A stile is a short staircase over a fence, used in lieu of a gate. Sometimes, there would still be a small gate in them, if there were animals kept inside the fence that could climb the staircase. For larger animals, that wasn't needed; most quadrupeds aren't very good at climbing stairs. Except goats, because goats are the devil.
Coffee, as we all know, comes pre-ground for the common folk, and in roasted bean form for the snobs. But it wasn't always like that; back in the day, people would get their coffee beans green, and roast them themselves.
Here's a historical picture of a snow-roller.
Source
It's from the 30s: snow-rollers were used into the automotive age.
Samp cakes are simple cakes made out of samp, which is cornmeal.
Panniers are a type of rigid saddlebag that mount on a firm harness across an animal's back. The baskets were often wicker, although of course they could be made out of many materials, such as wood, canvas, and rawhide.
Even though there aren't so many animals used to carry things, panniers are still used for bicycles and motorcycles, usually straddling the rear wheel.
Horses often get trimmed if they're going to be doing sweaty work in the wintertime. Their winter coats are designed to keep heat in (obviously), and they can get overheated if they're worked too hard.
[Horses also get trimmed for show purposes, but that's not germane here.]
Since their brisket, belly, and neck are where they lose the most heat, that's what often gets trimmed. Also, for a horse that's kept outside, a thick coat on its back insulates it from snowfall, since not enough body heat can get through to melt the snow.
Of course, trimming a pony like that does look kind of silly.
These days, that trimming is usually done with electric clippers, but there is also a tool called a thinning rake that can be run through the coat and shave most of it off.
Overmorrow is sort of a word (for anybody who stumbled on it; if you're already using it in your day-to-day speech, good for you!). It means 'the day after tomorrow,' which there isn't a single word for in English. Well, there isn't anymore. There was, though; in Middle English overmorwe. One site mentioned that it appeared in a 1913 dictionary, but not 1828, so it was apparently never popular in English.
I propose bringing it back.
I could put a YouTube video of a foal being born here if you're curious about the process, but I'd probably get a ban for it. So you're on your own for that. I can say that a mare in labor will often roll around and also sometimes get up because that helps get the foal in the proper position when the time comes.
Stay tuned for a writing process blog post, which is going to have some deleted scenes, and some more behind-the-scenes stuff!
Oooh, overmorrow.
We had more maples when I wad younger, and I recall making syrup in the early springs before blight and insurance companies took all the mature trees.
That isn't very nice to do to a friend Pinkie. I doubt that Applejack would be very appreciative of that.
Once again is this why all of your stories take so long to write is because of all the research you put into every story?
Heyhey! Townsends! I've been binge watching them lately. Good shit, eh?
I kinda mentioned that, in that one story.
I'm pretty sure our shop used to be a creamery. There was a local man - maybe still is - he was like 90 years old, and he came in and told us how when he was 12 (so in the '20s) his mom would send him every day there to pick up milk, and he would ride his bicycle there. So either a creamery or something similar. *scratches chin* I think there was a railroad line nearby. There's a big alley that runs very long at an awkward diagonal angle. Sounds like a former track to me.
At least the horse go over teh snow instead of trying to plough, dig, drill or ram through it.
Last time Ive seen pictures like what its been recently in the UK, was about 60 years ago locally where I live, which was claimed at the time to have been the worse recorded snowfall in UK history. Houses dissapearing and trains getting buried.
I still think that the people who spend a fortune boiling stuff off at 2 Mj/kilo haate those people who get the 450kJ/kilo freezing seperation for free, especially when in alcohol, boiling gives you only 40% and freezing can get you 90% plus just by sticking it outside, and no smell for the vue.
Japanese has words for both the day after tomorrow, and the week after next. You're right - they are handy.
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I've got one maple tree for sure (and possibly others down in the swampy area; I've never really looked). Never tapped it, though, although I did strongly consider it for the sake of this story. Boo for blight and insurance companies.
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I think that AJ did it to herself, so she wouldn't overheat when she was working.
That's exactly why. As mentioned in the previous blog post, just a little detail like the right word for their living room took probably an hour of research, maybe a bit more.
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It is. And useful for old-fashioned foods that nobody but a historian has ever heard of.
Also, he's probably the nicest man on the internet.
It's a good little historical detail.
Our store used to be a tractor repair shop, and before that it was a farm supply store, and before that it was a Dodge dealership. There's also a blacksmith's shop that was in our parking lot, according to the old plat maps.
Yeah, a diagonal alleyway was probably a railroad--I've got to imagine that most of the roads in Chicago were laid out in a grid pattern, since on mostly flat land there's no reason not to. Are there any big loading doors that face the alleyway on any of the buildings, or ledges about a boxcar floor high?
EDIT: yeah, it totally was. If you look south of your shop, there's still a railroad bridge over the river. It was probably the Chicago, North Shore, and Milwaukee RR, which was abandoned in 1963. If it was, that's the same railroad my grandma used to commute when she lived in Glencoe.
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As long as it isn't too deep. I don't know for a fact, but I'm betting horses aren't too happy going through snow that's up to their shoulders.
We haven't had a good snowstorm like that where I live in quite some time, possibly ever (well, not since the Ice Age, anyways).
The real danger with freeze-distilling alcohol is that you don't get all the methanol out of it, and you can actually manage to concentrate it enough to make your ice-beverage poison. I think that these days, there are filters which can get the methanol out of it, but I'm not sure.
It's also possible that boiling the sap changes it in a way that freezing wouldn't; there might be more to the flavor than just concentration. But I don't know for sure.
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See, they're clever people. Germans have it, too, and probably other langugages as well, but we English-speakers just don't have a handy word that's commonly known, which is a shame.
Especially since overmorrow is such a cool word.
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History like that is so cool.
You know, I legit never noticed that bridge. Maybe it's the way the channel is kinked, and all the trees, but going over either bridge on either side quite often, I've never seen it lol. Irritatingly, I can't find any info on that particular line, other than a vague suggestion that it may have been a freight line. Either way, it's looking like a shortcut offshoot of the main lines. Interesting though is the North Shore Line was an electric railway, didn't know that.
Right, Chicago is actually famous for its grid pattern. It's one of the oldest big American cities that actually employs a proper grid pattern, instead of the antiquated city-center spider web bullshit pattern you find in other old cities. Of course, that's mostly because the city literally burned down, and then they were like 'let's plan it right this time.'
Of course, that new plan also involved not building a paint factory and a turpentine factory out of wood, right next to each other, and in a tightly packed neighborhood of more wooden buildings. lol
It also would have made for a much shorter title for certain 2004 movie. I've always felt it's a shame english doesn't have that word, in spanish is "pasado mañana" (quite literally "after-tomorrow") and it's extremly useful. There is the opposite, "ante ayer" (the day before yesterday) too.
This makes me really happy, I reccomended you that youtube channel thinking that it could work for your kind of interest, many blogpost ago, I'm very pleased that you found it useful. And, indeed, as I said that time too, he's the nicest guy on the internet. Even when he's explicitly selling stuff of his bussines, you can still really see that he just loves what he does (or, alternatively, he's an academy award deserving actor).
Really nice and sweet story, as usually. It really got me thinking, how many ponies called Maple Leaf, related to the maple bussines may be? It's such an obvious pony name, that I can imagine a maple convention being a complete chaos between people trying to buy actual maple stuff and people calling each other with their maple-related names. Similar with other farm products I guess.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for apple fritters?"
"You got to the right place, I'm his cousin!"
"Oh, no, I just wanted to buy some fresh pastry"
"Oh, Fresh Pastry? She has a stand on the other corridor, but she actually only sells farming tools"
"And where do I get some baked goods?"
"Ah, in that case you'll want to visit Apple pie, he sells the best apple fritters!"
"And where do I find Apple Pie?!"
"Apple Pie? Well, my cousin bakes the best apple pie around! Just cross around the corner and ask for Apple Fritters!"
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If it makes you feel any better, the one that Silver Glow and company visited in Kalamzoo is one that I didn't know was there until I saw it on a satellite map . . . and that's the kind of thing I generally do keep an eye out for.
The North Shore also moved freight--a lot of interurban railroads did.
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Being able to start over again is sometimes advantageous, that's for sure. Detroit has a spider web pattern towards downtown (and to a lesser extent into the suburbs), whereas Lansing and Kalamazoo are almost complete grid cities.
But what could possibly go wrong with that design?
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It also would have made for a much shorter title for certain 2004 movie. I've always felt it's a shame english doesn't have that word, in spanish is "pasado mañana" (quite literally "after-tomorrow") and it's extremly useful. There is the opposite, "ante ayer" (the day before yesterday) too.
A darn good title for that 2004 movie, IMHO.
And we technically do have that word, it's just that nobody at all uses it, and it's apparently rarely (if ever) in dictionaries. Interestingly, Google underlined saphouse as being misspelled . . . but not overmorrow (Fimfiction does underline it as misspelled, though).
Y'know, I've got nothing against a guy making a buck selling stuff. If it was just advertisements, I probably would pay him no mind, but you can tell that he finds the history fascinating, and he's extremely personable, and by golly, it is really interesting stuff. Obviously, there's a lot that isn't terribly useful for my purposes (most stuff about meat-based dishes that the ponies are unlikely to fancy, for example), but everything else is pure gold.
Obviously, even with humans there's the potential problem of two (or more) having the same first name, regardless of naming scheme.
As for the confusion factor, there's two possibilities. One that I like is that there's some kind of linguistic cue so that you know it's a pony name and not an object/action/whatever. That could be as simple as the literary equivalent of "Hey, name Maple Leaf, have you seen any object Maple Leaves around?" Or of course it could be more complicated than that. It could also rely on context, as many things in English do. (For example, do you get a tear in your eye when you tear a piece of paper?"
The other option is that there is confusion sometimes, as the show itself played for comedy in at least one episode.
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for some reason, I thougth for a second that it was a joke about how the ponies in the show are never drawn with a winter coat and are trimmed for the show.
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No, although that would have been clever if I'd thought of that.
Supposedly Henry Ford had the trunk of the Model T designed specifically to fit those old milk jugs.