From the beginning, the tapping was routinely executed by settlers in snowshoes, who carved their own wooden spouts and made their buckets out of hard wood boards. After drilling a hole 5 cm deep and 1 cm in diameter, they set the spout in with a small mallet. The maple sap collected in the buckets was carried to the sugar camp in a barrel placed on a sled pulled by horses. The fire in the boiling stoves was fed with dry logs of hard wood. Since the thermometer did not yet exist, the density of the syrup was measured by eye.