144 Old Days on the Farm 



the cellar, the residue of the apple crop would be 

 bagged up and taken to the cider mill to be con- 

 verted into liquid nectarine or tasteful and appe- 

 tising *'sass." Many of the villages throughout 

 Old Canada had cider mills, and several of these, 

 that I knew as a boy, made a business of boiling 

 down the cider — in other words, they made apple- 

 butter while you waited. Before that time cider, 

 only, was made at the mills and this was boiled 

 down at the farmer's home, in a big copper kettle, 

 which would be loaned around by the man who 

 owned the cider mill. 



TALLMAN SWEETS MADE FINE **SASS" 



It was not unusual for a farmer to take one or 

 two big wagon-loads of apples to the mill and re- 

 turn with perhaps, two fifty-gallon milk-cans full 

 of apple-butter and likely a couple of barrels of 

 sweet cider. If he had a lot of Tallman Sweets a 

 generous quantity of these would be used to 

 sweeten up the cider and the "sass." 



THE NECTAE OP APPLES 



Kept in a cool cellar the **sass" and cider would 

 remain sweet, that is it would not ferment, for a 

 long time. In the meantime the farmer's family 

 would be revelling — three meals per diem and be- 

 tween meals, too — on these tasteful products of 

 the orchard. By the addition of certain ingredi- 

 ents — ^most every farmer had his own recipe — ^the 



