Recently this short info piece came up on Jamaica Cottage Shops facebook page, and I thought it very interesting and worth a share.
“A sugar shack, also known as sap house, sugar house, sugar shanty or sugar cabin (French: cabane à sucre) is a semi-commercial establishment, prominent mainly in Eastern Canada (although in some of New England’s territory which is today part of the United States old sugar cabins can be found on properties belonging to the first settler families). Like the name implies, sugar houses are small cabins or series of cabins, originally destined to belong to certain private or farm estates, and where sap collected from sugar maple trees is boiled into maple syrup. Often found on the same territory is the sugar bush, which is intended for cultivation and production of maple syrup by way of craftsmanship (as opposed to global mass production factories built for that purpose in the 20th century).”
These sugar shanties have been produced on the 70,000 sq ft grounds that is Jamaica Cottage Shops building facilities, in the beautiful Green Mountains of southern Vermont , and they are really beautiful traditional examples of what JCS can do.
