It was always an event when the old logs had to be taken up and new
ones put down. I saw the logs renewed twice in my time; once poplar
logs were used, and once hemlock, both rather short-lived. A man
from a neighboring town used to come with his long auger and bore
the logs--a spectacle I was never tired of looking at.
Then the sap bush in the groin of the hill, and but a few minutes'
walk from the house, what a feature that was! In winter and in
summer, what delightful associations I have with it! I know each
of its great sugar maples as I know my friends or the members of
the family. Each has a character of its own, and in sap-producing
capacity they differ greatly. A fringe of the great trees stood out
in the open fields; these were the earliest to run.
In early March we used to begin to make ready for sugar-making
by overhauling the sap "spiles," resharpening the old ones, and
making new ones. The old-fashioned awkward sap-gouge was used in
tapping in those days, and the "spiles" or spouts were split out
of basswood blocks with this gouge, and then sharpened so as to
fit the half-round gash which the gouge made in the tree. The
dairy milk-pans were used to catch the sap, and huge iron kettles
to boil it down in.
When the day came to tap the bush, the caldrons, the hogsheads,
and the two hundred or more pans with the bundles of spiles were
put upon the sled and drawn by the oxen up to the boiling-place in
the sap bush.
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