The ever increasing demand for pure, genuine, first class maple goods at a high price as compared to other sugars has led to the making and placing upon the market numerous imitations of our maple product, in which the poorer grade of maple sugar is used as a flavoring. These goods often bear fraudulent labels in which it is represented that they were manufactured in Vermont, though with the exception of a few pounds used as flavoring, the stuff manufactured of glucose and other compounds, never saw a maple tree in Vermont or any other state. This is the article placed upon the market in January and February, marked “Vermont New Maple Sugar”. You may ask, how may we get this best grade of maple sugar and be sure of its purity and quality. By corresponding with any member of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers’ Association, whose names appear at the back of this booklet. Get your goods direct from the producers. MAPLE SWEETS AND HOW TO GET THE PURE GOODS. If Vermont is noted as being the home of any industry, that industry is the production of maple sugar and syrup, and in this booklet we will tell you something of the process of manufacture and of whom you can procure this delicious luxury in all its purity. The producer must first have a grove of maple trees of the sugar maple variety. These groves Vermont has in abundance. They are on the hillside and in the valley; yet a grove of sugar maples that can be utilized for sugar making cannot be produced in a few years, as the tree is comparatively of slow growth and lives to a good old age. Not many trees are used for sugar making until they are 40 years old, and have a diameter of a foot or more. These are called second growth. Then there are others, two, three or even four feet in diameter; sturdy old trees that have withstood the storms of many winters. Some of the trees used for sugar making purposes have been growing since the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620. Along in March of each year, the farmer begins to watch the weather for signs of spring and conditions favorable to a flow of sap. It can only be obtained for a period of a few weeks in the spring, and on certain days when the weather conditions are favorable. Snow usually lays on the ground when the sugarmaker begins his operations in the sugar camp. The first step is to break roads in the soft and thawing snow, so that the teams can get about and gather the sap. This breaking roads is often no light task as the snow oftentimes has icy crusts beneath the surface. After the oxen or horses have been over the road several times and they have become somewhat passable, the buckets are distributed one or two to a tree and the sugar maker goes about his grove tapping them by boring a hole with a bit three-eighths to one-half inch in diameter and two or three feet from the ground as the snow will permit; in this hole he drives a spout that conveys the sap to the bucket, and on which the bucket usually hangs.