Nathan Benn. Woodfin Camp 
ing to Lucille, “It’s a smell you never 
forget — boiling sap, wood smoke, and 
sweaty old men.” If the weather is 
just right and the sap is running 
steady, the fires and the evaporator 
may be tended round the clock. Vis- 
iting for a bit breaks the monotony, 
and you almost always get to have 
a taste of new syrup. “What I like 
to do best when they’re boiling,” Lu- 
cille continues, “is to take an egg, 
crack it lightly, and put it down in 
the boiling syrup in the first section 
of the evaporator, letting the egg ooze 
a little out along the shell and the 
taste of the syrup get into the egg. 
Is that good!” 
Sugaring goes on, in fits and starts, 
during March and April, as long as 
the nights drop back to below freezing 
and the days have sun and get warm. 
74 
Then the frost really comes out of 
the roads, the culverts collapse, and 
the spring rivers appear. One always 
runs down the middle of the road in 
front of Andy Scott’s house, and for 
several weeks a wide swath of water 
rushes behind Forest Davis’s barn. 
Sugaring comes to a climactic end 
with a sugaring-off party. 
Maple sugar is made by boiling ma- 
ple syrup until it reaches the right 
temperature and then by stirring it 
and beating it until it reaches the right 
graininess and consistency. There’s 
never enough maple sugar, so making 
it is an event, almost always marked 
by a celebration. In the past, people 
piled into the sugarhouse for the sug- 
aring-off party, but today they come 
more often to a farm kitchen to eat 
the hot syrup and maple sugar poured 
Costa Manos. Magnum Photos 
