XII 

 VERMONT MAPLE SUGAR 

 Sap-Boiling Time in the Green Mountain State 



At ten o'clock the sap began to tinkle all through 

 the grove. In nearly eight hundred buckets it fell, 

 drop by drop, and the sugar season had begun. It 

 was late March, but from the snow to the sky the 

 day had all the warmth and glow of June. The 

 sun had been up since before six. By seven it was 

 shining bright into the Southern Vermont valley 

 which the Deerfield River has carved out of the 

 everlasting hills that roll and rise till the cone of 

 Haystack tips them, nearly four thousand feet 

 above the sea level. Yet till ten o'clock the maples 

 sulked. 



More sap is boiled in this beautiful bowl-shaped 

 valley of which Wilmington is the metropolis than 

 in any other part of the State. Vermont makes 

 four-fifths of the maple sugar that is made in New 

 England, nearly half of what is made in the United 



