. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. of thisto make a place for the spout of hard wood,grooved with a gouge and finished with draw-shave and pocket-knife. Troughs of white mapleor basswood, split in halves, dug out with the axeand smoothed with the gouge, were used to catchthe sap, which was gathered in hand-made pailshung from a sap-yoke which rested on thebearers shoulders and took the weight. The boiling was in the big black iron kettlewhich the elder Grimes remembers so well. Itwas hung by chains from a pole set up on twocrotched sticks. Beneath it were two big greenlogs between which t
. Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist. of thisto make a place for the spout of hard wood,grooved with a gouge and finished with draw-shave and pocket-knife. Troughs of white mapleor basswood, split in halves, dug out with the axeand smoothed with the gouge, were used to catchthe sap, which was gathered in hand-made pailshung from a sap-yoke which rested on thebearers shoulders and took the weight. The boiling was in the big black iron kettlewhich the elder Grimes remembers so well. Itwas hung by chains from a pole set up on twocrotched sticks. Beneath it were two big greenlogs between which the fire was kept. Sugarhouses were unknown and dry wood was rare,yet with care a respectably clean sugar was made. A piede of wood taken from one of these treesin 1873 is still preserved in Vermont. It is twentyinches by four, yet it shows five boxing places,two deep in the wood and three that the latergrowth of the tree had not been able to was made from these trees in 1764, andthey were tapped each year by some member of. But here is a sweetness that the tree almost bursts to deliver VERMONT MAPLE SUGAR 179 the Kathan family until 1862. One of the largestof these trees was cut in 1858, and the number ofconcentric rings of growth showed that nearlya hundred years had then passed since the treewas first boxed for sap. In 1894 another was cut,having a box mark only three inches beneath thesurface of the wood, showing that in this tree atleast someone had gone back to the ancient methodnot more than half a generation before the dateof cutting the tree. Probably scattered trees ofthe groves of a century and a half ago still standin other portions of the State, carrying deep their heart wood the scars of the old-time sugarmaking. The Vermont laws against the adulterating ofmaple sap products are now quite strict, and it isprobable that original packages from the Stateare reasonably sure to be what they are sold syrup weighing eleven pounds to the gallonis p
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booki, booksubjectnaturalhistory
