Children made do with much simpler fun back then. "Sugaring off" now includes much modern equipment, but is still hard work, yet a time of play as well.Winter had been whistling around with his hands in his pockets a good three months and more; but the violets and daisies, tucked under a thick blanket of snow, had been kept from freezing. People call Winter a very cold, severe fellow; still there must be a tender spot in his heart somewhere, so kindly does he protect all the delicate plants.
But now the great warm-hearted old Sun was coming back, and Winter, afraid of his long bright days, ran off to the North Pole. A flock of bluebirds came to welcome their old friend, and one robin-redbreast ventured out early to sing him a song. A little warm breeze crept through Farmer Cheery's maple forest, awoke the treees from their long, long sleep, and they all began to shake hands and nod toward each other, whispering: "Good! Good! Here comes the Spring!"
Soon the warm air made them feel thirsty and faint; the tiny twigs complained to the branches; the branches told the trunks, and the trunks carried the news down to the roots. Maple-trees keep all their provisions in an underground cellar; so the roots finding that, sure enough, the ground was no longer frozen and hard, began to feel about, and sent out little rootlets that gathered up the good things,—just the kinds they knew maple twigs loved best. Does n't it seem funny that they can tell? The mpales take one kind of food, the pines another, the birches another, and for each the rootlets pick out just the right kind from the same ground. As fast as the rootlets gathered the food, they sent it up to the branches—a vary delicate, sweet drink; and still they sent more and more, the little twigs always taking the freshest, and sending back what was left over. The branches felt very much revived as they were fed, grew very social, and began to tell of the pretty red dresses they would put on before long; red for the cool spring days, and afterward green for hot summer. They were merry planning their new wardrobes, I assure you; you could have heard it if you had had the right kind of ears.
Farmer Cheery came in from his barn chores.
"I say, wife, it's growing warm! Should n't wonder if the sap would run such weather as this; guess I must tap one tree and see."
So Farmer Cheery took his auger and went out into the maple orchard. It did n't take him long to make a little hole in one of the tree-trunks, and put in a little spout; nor was it many minutes before drop by drop came the sap.
"Ah! that's fine!" said Farmer Cheery, and he went home in haste. The next we saw of him, he was driving out into the orchard with a load of one hundred and fifty clean, bright, tin sap-buckets and one hundred and fifty fresh little troughs. Then, in each one of his hundred and fifty maple-trees he bored a hole and put a trough in, and a bucket beneath to catch the sap as it came dropping out.
"Did n't it starve the poor little branches waiting for their food?"
Oh, no! There was enough for them left,—all they needed to keep them very fresh and make them grow. So many, many pailfuls ran up and down every day, that the one Farmer Cheery took would hardly be missed.
Every morning and night for two or three weeks, the good farmer might be seen with his great tank, clean as clean could be, driving around to collect the sap that had run out. He knew that one reason why maple sugar is sometimes dark-colored is because the pails and tanks that hold the sap are not washed thoroughly; so he took great pains with his. He knew, too, that if any water gets in, the sap must be boiled longer to make sugar of it, and the longer it is boiled the darker it grows; so, if he saw a storm coming, he collected all the sap, and turned the buckets upside down till the rain was over.
Farmer Cheery had a great iron pan, which would hold,—oh, I don't dare tell you how many pailfuls,—a great, great many; and this very large pan rested on some stone posts about two feet from the ground. Under this he built a fire, and into it he poured his sap, stirring it while it boiled almost all day long. When he drew it off, such beautiful clear sirup I don't believe you ever saw. This he did two or three times each week for nearly a month; after that, the sap was not as good for people to use, though just what the little twigs needed as they grew older.
Some of his sirup the farmer put up in cans to send to the cities; some of it he boiled more and more, so that it would be sugar when cooled. Then he poured it into pretty scolloped tins, to harden into the round cakes you like so much; and some of it his little grandchildren waxed on snow.
You don't know how that is?
Well, May packed a panful of snow, just as hard as she could crowd it in ; then she smoothed off the top as even as a marble table, and she and Sally carried it to Grandpa Cheery, who dropped upon their snow a spoonful of the hot sirup here and there. The little thin, waxy sheets of suddenly cooled sirup, picked up with a fork and eaten as soon as cool, made an excellent luncheon; and the children tugged their pan of snow around to give every one a taste, declaring that "sugar-season" was the very best time in the year.
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