Sugaring time

At about this time of year

I am seized with an acute but futile longing

to start sugarin'.

See here and here.

I have known exactly what to do

since 1966 when I first read Pa's instructions

in Little House in the Big Woods.*

You need wooden buckets and little troughs
 made from cedar and white ash

'for those woods won't give a bad taste to the maple syrup.'

To make the troughs, split out little sticks as long as your hand

 and as big as your two fingers.

Near the end cut the stick half through, 

and split one half off.

Then you'll have a flat stick, with a square piece at one end. 

Drill a hole with a bit lengthwise through the square part, 

then whittle the wood until it is only a thin shell round the hole.

Hollow out the flat part until it is a little trough.

You make dozens of these, and ten new buckets,

then you'll have them all ready 

for when the first warm weather comes 

and the sap begins to move in the trees.

Go into the maple woods and bore a hole in each tree,

hammer the the round end of the little trough into the hole,

and set a cedar bucket on the ground under the flat end.

Every day you empty the sap from the buckets into the barrel.

Empty the sap into the iron kettle.

Light a big bonfire underneath it and boil the sap.

Skim the sap with a big long-handled wooden ladle

made of basswood. 

Lift and cool the sap in the ladle if it gets too hot.

The instant the sap is graining, rake the fire 

out from beneath the kettle

and as fast as you can ladle the thick syrup

into the milk pans where it will turn to cakes

of hard brown maple sugar.

The best bit comes in the next chapter, 

when you go to the dance at Grandpa's and you 

pour hot syrup onto plates of snow and eat it

as it cools into soft candy.

'They could eat all they wanted,

for maple sugar never hurt anybody.'

* by Laura Ingalls Wilder