OLD HOMESTEAD 



with wide runners that would not sink in the snow, and thills of 

 young round birch that a horse could lie down on and not hurt 

 or get hurt thereby. Old Dick, though stone blind, would feel 

 his way along safely and carefully in three or four feet of snow, 

 with a iifty-pail gathering-tub of sap and a boy on the sled be- 

 hind him. As the snow went down two horses could be used. 

 The woods were rough and full of cradle-knolls, fallen trees, big 

 logs and rocks. 



To systematize the work the ''bush" was divided into 

 what we called routes — pronounced ''routs," not "roots." 

 These routes or sap-roads were laid out as best they might 

 be to lead around old fallen trees and obstacles not easily re- 

 moved, anywhere a sled could be drawn, keeping within the 

 shortest distance possible of the maple trees, so that in but few 

 cases did the sap have to be carried by hand in buckets more 

 than fifteen or twenty rods. These routes were named and sys- 

 tematically gone over, and were so arranged that ordinarily the 

 run of all the trees on any given one could be put into a fifty- 

 pail gathering-tub, to be drawn to the sugar-house. This gather- 

 ing-tub was larger at the bottom than at the top and made of 

 inch pine, and had a twenty-inch hole in the top, closed by a 

 tight-fitting cover. The sap was thus gathered, drawn to the 

 sugar-house and dipped or pumped with a tin boat-pump from 

 the gathering-tub to the great store-tubs which stood on the 

 platform outside the house. 



The boiling or reducing to syrup was done in Russia-iron pans 

 on a long arch — two and, later on, three pans in a row. The 

 back pan was about seven by three and a half feet, and nine 

 or ten inches deep; the middle and forward ones were about 

 three and one-half feet square. A little trough led from the 

 "feeder" store-tub, and as the sap boiled down it was dipped 



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