PHASES OF FARM LIFE 



get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings 

 the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of 

 the maple-tree. It is the fruit of the equal marriage 

 of the sun and the frost. When the frost is all out of 

 the ground, and all the snow gone from its surface, 

 the flow stops. The thermometer must not rise 

 above 38 or 40 by day, or sink below 24 or 25 at 

 night, with wind in the north west; a relaxing south 

 wind, and the run is over for the present. Sugar 

 weather is crisp weather. How the tin buckets 

 glisten in the gray woods; how the robins laugh; 

 how the nuthatches call; how lightly the thin blue 

 smoke rises among the trees ! The squirrels are out 

 of their dens; the migrating water-fowls are stream- 

 ing northward; the sheep and cattle look wistfully 

 toward the bare fields; the tide of the season, in 

 fact, is just beginning to rise. 



Sap-letting does not seem to be an exhaustive 

 process to the trees, as the trees of a sugar-bush 

 appear to be as thrifty and as long-lived as other 

 trees. They come to have a maternal, large-waisted 

 look, from the wounds of the axe or the auger, and 

 that is about all. 



In my sugar-making days, the sap was carried to 

 the boiling-place in pails by the aid of a neck-yoke 

 and stored in hogsheads, and boiled or evaporated 

 in immense kettles or caldrons set in huge stone 

 arches ; now, the hogshead goes to the trees hauled 

 upon a sled by a team, and the sap is evaporated in 

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