Sweetest Joys Indeed!

A Vermont Folklife Listening Party

Audio Transcripts

Signs of Spring

Daisy Turner - Signs of Spring

Jane Beck: Were there any signs connected with the maple tree that you would watch?

Daisy Turner: Yeah, always after January, the first thaw, the very first January thaw was a sign that nature—leaves and things would be starting to come out and the soft material in the trees would begin to loosen up. And that was a sign—the January thaw. Then after that thaw would start, then everybody would be feeling happier. 

And then on March—January, February, March—that was the town meeting day. And then always the Town Meeting was the first Tuesday…I don’t know why they had it on the first Tuesday in the month of March!

Jane Beck: Were there any signs that you would look to the maple tree for?

Daisy Turner: Well yes, because that would be the sign that the buds and things would be getting started. Otherwise the sap couldn't run, because it would be frozen hard in the tree. But just as soon as the spring begin to come, then the next thing you'd hear the frogs all singing. That's a sign of…it just sounds crazy to people! But we had all them signs...the frogs would start singing.

Sugaring Memories

Ken Hastings:“You know sugaring is something that’s really a disease. You either have the disease of sugar or you don’t and it’s something that, you know I can’t explain it. If you like sugaring, you know, and I can talk to people today and you can have a conversation with a sugarmaker that’s totally different than I can have with you, because maybe the knowledge that we both share or the quirks of how the thing goes or ponder, you know, “how do you do that?” Or you know, and sometimes you have secrets and I think maybe you try to make everything seem a secret sometimes, like “I know something you don’t!” But you know, that’s part of the cherished part of the sugar maker community I guess.” 

Unknown: Sugaring is something that you've got to do it when the weather is right. You have to have sap running in order to tap or else it dries the tree up.

Unknown: They used to have two weeks vacation in the spring—early spring. I think they used to call it “sugaring vacation.” And I don’t know whether they did it elsewhere or not but up here in East Braintree, they call it the Snowsville School, there were enough children whose parents sugared so that when a farmer thought it was time to start sugaring all he did was call up the teacher and say that he wanted to start sugaring and they had their vacation when they thought that the children could be the most useful in the sugar orchard.

Barbara Bickford:We sugared. Oh, how we sugared. And finally I got big enough so I could look in the evaporator. And, I boiled while we gave it sap. And I have a tiny little bottle of cream with a pinhole top and if the syrup started to boil over, you'd drop it, well, as soon as it got up there, I'd drop in some milk and down it would go, again. And it made dark syrup. But I didn't know that at the time. Ha! Ha! Ha! And we’d boil the eggs in the syrup. Yeah, we used to do a lot of sugaring. 

Paul Silloway: We lived across the valley from the hospital. At home I always tapped what they called Boutwell's Pasture. Well it's all grown up to trees now. But anyway, up in Boutwell's Pasture there was probably about three or four big maple trees, great big ones up there. And I remember teasing my mother to call up Mrs. Boutwell and see if I could tap those trees. And I did, I tapped them and got some sap and mother boiled it on the kitchen stove. So I always liked sugaring.

Unknown: “It’s a lot of hard work, of course, it’s the hardest work on the farm. And it’s terribly boring doing the boiling. And terribly hot. It’s physically difficult work. It’s hard work to gather and there have been seasons when we’ve done the whole season on snowshoes. And to carry big pails of sap with snowshoes and maybe sink down a foot or two in the snow with every step you know that’s just brutal.” 

Changing Technology

Wallace Illsey: “That’s the most important place to put a horse is in the sugar woods. You just hang your lines up and while you’re gathering sap and they’ll go from tree to tree on demand and you just tend to your gathering and you don’t lug the sap back to them or ahead to them you just stop them right where it’s the most handiest spot to dump the sap. You don’t have to have an extra man just to set there and drive a tractor and freeze to death. Yeah, you can be behind of them or ahead of them. You speak to them to get up and they’ll come. And a well trained horse, the minute you holler “ho” they’ll stop.” 

Walter Smith: One year, we were breaking sugar roads, along in the spring in about six or eight inches of new snow, and the boys took them up to the woods. And we had them hitched to a bobsled with a tray behind, and they started them up in on one of the sugar roads. And finally they got on the tray and just let them go. And they would remember where those roads were, went right up through, turned and came back on another one. Well, your tractors don't do that. 

Those tractors, they have to use the brains that's on the seat! And, some of them get smashed up pretty badly, because those tractors don't have a brain of their own. But the old horse, when he's done enough, he knows, you know it. And I used oxen here, for sugaring, after I got rid of my last horses and I had to have something I could get around the woods with. So I had a yoke of cattle. Well a yoke of cattle is nice to work with. You have to use quite a little judgment and quite a little patience. But, we could pick up sap with them and they get along ahead and you holler to them…they'd come along, wait. But, you’re using a tractor to pick up sap with in the woods, and you holler for a long time before it will come. Ha! Ha!

Katharine Flint DuClos:“Dad always had about three pair, and one of them would be a pair of calfs, little small ones. And he would let us girls break those so that by the time they got big they would be handy for him. And then we had a sled that in the spring of the year we girls would hitch our little yoke of oxen to the sled and dad put in six big milk cans and we'd go round and gather the sap, bring it down to the sugar house with our little oxen and he'd go out and dump it into the big tank and we'd go and get some more.”

Paul Silloway

Greg Sharrow: That seems like an activity which is, although they have these fancy outfits, I can't think what they're called, osmosis or something?

Paul Silloway: Reverse osmosis.

Greg Sharrow: It seems as though, basically sugaring has not changed a whole lot in the course of your lifetime, is that true? 

Paul Silloway: Well, yes it has changed a lot. You see we used to gather sap all in buckets. But now it's all tubing. We have miles of tubing run through the woods. It has changed quite a lot on that line.

Ray Grimes (Lincoln)

Ray Grimes: Now this sugar bush up here is 700 trees all on tubing. But if I sugar this year, we aren't going to run out the tubing. 

Greg Sharrow: Why?

Ray Grimes: Well, I don't like tubing to start with. If I'm going to start over again, I'd start up with buckets. Some years we've had trouble with squirrels. So I have to take down that tubing every year now and bring it in. And that's a big job to wash it—and bring it in and wash it, reel it up again and store it. And then when I get ready to tap, they'll probably take it 10, 12 days to get the thing set up again. 

Well, if I had buckets, they'll set it up in a day and a half. And then with the tubing, I had help to wash it, which just runs into money. But with the buckets, after I get done with my strawberries, I do the buckets myself, don't cost me a damn thing. And we have a lot of problems with tubing. 

There's a lot of things to setting up a sugar plastic line. It ain't just a matter of boring a hole in a tree and sticking a spout in there. Ain't going to get no sap that way.

Greg Sharrow: What are some of the things that are involved? Or is that too big a question?

Ray Grimes: You got to keep the lines straight, so you don't get saggy. You got to select your place on your tree where you tap. You should always be tapping so that the sap is going to, to begin with, you run through half inch lines…secondary lines. And then we run the smaller line from the tap itself, into this half inch. So you should keep it coming down the direction of the flow all the time…all that sap. 

They've changed this system an awful lot. To begin with, we fell right in for it, started with it, and they hadn't got the kinds worked out of it. It didn't work good. So we got rid of all that after a while, I gave it all away. So a fellow came to get the spouts, “He said what are you going to do with all that tubing?” I said,  “I'm going to give it to you.” He had a truck with him. He had to put on some sideboard to get it on. I don’t know…he hauled it all away. Just too small. When the sap's running, it throws out air with it. And unless that tubing's big enough to carry the sap and the air, the air will plug it. So the sap won't run. 

Greg Sharrow: Is that why people set up a vacuum pump on it?

Ray Grimes: No, that's greed. They put that up for greed. That's what killing the maples like everything.

Greg Sharrow: Because it pulls too much.

Ray Grimes: Worst thing they could do. Pull that sap out of those trees.

George Daniels

George Daniels: Of course when I first remembered sugaring, they used wooden buckets and wooden spouts. We’ve come quite a ways since then, up to osmosis. 

Greg Sharrow: Yeah. Did you know how to make those things?

George Daniels: Buckets, Shaker buckets, most of them.

Greg Sharrow: What's that mean? 

George Daniels: Shaker buckets.

Greg Sharrow: Yeah, but what’s a Shaker bucket?

George Daniels: The Shakers made them!

Greg Sharrow: Oh so you bought them from the Shakers?

George Daniels: Well, somebody did. They were always painted red. Down in Enfield. Cedar buckets. Then we had some that was made out of white maple. I don't know who made them or anything. They were a lot bigger than…Shaker buckets were small buckets. I've seen wooden buckets that probably hold 16, 18 quarts made out of white maple. Wooden staves. Shakers use steel staves, iron staves. We had a lot of wooden ones, wooden hoops on them. I don't know but we still got some up to the sugar house now, maybe. There's not as many of them around as there was.

Why sugar? 

George Messier

Part 1

Greg Sharrow: Working in the woods and farming went together. Those were sort of two different parts of farming?

John Messier:I had to because you couldn't make a living just on the farm. Because most farms back then, if you had a 30 cow farm you was a big farmer. Raymond Smith had a big farm, he was the only big farm on the road. He had milked 30 cows. (This is Gilead.) Yeah, he was a big farmer. We had a hill farm, we milked anywhere from 8 to 15 cows most of the time. 

Well you couldn't support 2 families, you couldn't make a living on that alone. So in the spring of the year we would help during sugaring time for Joe Paquette down the road and we'd get a dollar an hour apiece for doing that. And that would go into buying hay if we needed it or if we didn't have enough, or grain. 

Then when we could get into the woods we'd started working the woods. And when it was haying time the farm had to be tended to. When haying was over then we could go into the woods. My father took care of the farm and I took care of the woods. We had money coming in. And then we logged our own when we needed money. We'd get out and lumber at home. It took every cent you had to keep going, back then even. 

Part 2

John Messier: I sugared when I had the kids to home over across. I used to sugar in the sugar house that Tim's got now. I had a little 2 by 4 rig, and Christ, you'd boil forever. But I made 40 gallons a year over there. The boys got fun out of it, and we hung a couple hundred buckets. Then when the kids got too big, I went out of it.
Part 3

Greg Sharrow: So your sugarwoods is up behind here?

John Messier: You can see my sugar house from the road, and we got a sugar house up there. We got 400 on pipeline. And then last year we put 600 buckets out along the road. We made 120 gallons last year. My son in law, it's his project—Paul Davis. He wanted something to do and Dick Malone gave us the sugaring stuff, it was all falling apart and I fixed it all up and we built the sugar house. Now we got a nice little sugaring operation. So we do it for fun. And I do what I can…Paul, it’s his project. So we make some syrup, have our own syrup, sell a little…what the hell.

Floyd Jenne:The sugar house was built in 1896. So this year will be 100 years sap been boiling in it. Every year. The sap, it comes in cycles now. Back I've heard dad tell, 1870, that's when my grandfather, of course my father was just born then, had an old iron kettle, we got it down there. I used to have it shut out in in the shed. And he had 50 wooden buckets, them old wooden ones. He made 27 gallons of syrup out of it. He burned up 5 cord of wood I've heard him tell say. Then they had a good year in 1900, that was another good year there. And 1930 was a good year, I remember that. I was 16. We had 495 buckets and made 395 gallons of syrup. 1960 was a good year. We made 1,050 gallons. So maybe 1990 will be a good year. We've had 3 poor years now. This last year wasn't too bad. Christ, I had 3,500 taps. I should make 2,000 gallons. Sap don't run the way it used to. Mother Nature. 

Sweetest Joys…

Unknown: It’s a beautiful smell, it’s, well some people like roses. I like the smell of sap boiling when it’s fresh, when it’s new. And then along towards the end of the season it smells like someone’s boiling up their socks and then it’s about time I pull the hose out and throw it in the brook.

Unknown: Just about anything I cook you could use maple syrup. Rice pudding, you use it as a sauce on apple dumpling and on ice cream, donuts and cakes and pies.

Ruth Larrow:We always had maple sugar in the house. Of course you had a lot of maple syrup…and always a tub of maple sugar that you go and dip into to get soft in the middle. And it’s just wonderful for baking cookies and baked beans or anything that needed sugar.

Wallace Illsley:I sweeten anything with syrup, I don’t use any white sugar. And I love little syrup on toast, bread, any way. I like especially syrup on my bread when I’m having baked beans. And we have syrup in the baked beans, we use syrup for sweetening baked beans. Syrup is something I use all the time. Three times a day.

Unknown:It's excellent in bran muffins.

Unknown: ...and cake and maple pudding is very good. It's like a corn starch pudding only put maple syrup in instead of white sugar. You can pickle hams and bacons with maple syrup. You use dark maple syrup so to give it more flavor when you’re pickling hams and bacon with it."

Unknown: We had maple cream. And maple cream we used on hot muffins, toast, could use it as frostings. It was a nice sandwich bread with peanut butter. Maple cream and bananas are very good, and peanut butter.

Katharine Flint DuClos:We children never had any candy. I can’t ever remember having any candy when I was a child. But we always had maple sugar cakes that we could go and get whenever we wanted sweet.

John Messier: Oh Christ, I use maple syrup on everything. When I was a kid I used to have it on my potato. My grandfather started me with that.

Edgar Dodge - Sap Beer

Edgar Dodge:“Well I can tell you that you would take the last run of the sugaring operation, know what I'm talking about? ‘Bout to get down to where you can kind of taste the leaves in it, that sort of thing? Yep. And instead of boiling it down to syrup you boiled it down more or less halfway we’ll say, it’s still like water as far as that part of it goes, and of course it’s got considerable sweet in it. And then you dry it off and you put it in the barrel. And it was not only permissible but it was common to put in anything you might happen to think would add something to it. Like, perhaps 10 quarts of corn. Course you’d put in the hops and you’d put in the raisins and you’d let it work. Course the sugar would work it, so forth and so on. And this would be fit to drink about the first of haying, which in those days was 4th of July. You started haying 4th of July. And so by the middle of July, the sap beer, now sap beer, was very peculiar stuff. The same people would make sap beer to the best of their ability and sometimes it turned out junk. Stringy! Nobody could drink it. Cut it off with a pair of shears. That sort of thing! Again, you could have sap beer that was just as clear as any ale you ever saw. And I don’t think the man ever lived that could drink two 8 oz glasses and walk 10 minutes later. I don’t believe so. So that was sap beer. I doubt if there’s a barrel of sap beer in the state of Vermont today. I doubt it. But I don’t really know. But I must say, it was a pretty good drink for haying. Pretty good drink for haying, yup.”  

Thelma Neill - Maple Sugar Pie

Jane Beck: Maple sugar pie—Thelma Neill.

Thelma Neill: T'isn't hard to make either.

Jane Beck: One egg...oh my, maybe I'll try this. One egg, two cups maple sugar or two cups good syrup. Which would you use?

Thelma Neill: Fancy if I had it. I almost always have it, because we made a lot of fancy.

Jane Beck: Two tablespoons flour, a piece of butter or Oleo—size of an egg, I like that. A large egg or a bantam egg? You know what?

Thelma Neill: Either one. One time, Albert's cousins was here and they were asking me how I made this and that. They said, "How long do you bake it?" Well, I said, "'Til it's done!"

Jane Beck: And two teaspoons vinegar. Stir all together.

Thelma Neill: Yeah, cuts that syrup, you see. It's sweet.

Jane Beck: Yeah, yes. Bake in two crusts, uh-huh, 'til golden brown at 400.

Thelma Neill: T'isn't hard to make. I took one up to town meeting, of course we all take something for town meeting and put it together, and I made this large pie. And they come along and wonder what kind of pie I wanted. And I said, "I want one piece of my own". And he said, "What did you bring?" And I say, "Maple sugar." "You bought maple sugar pie?" And I says, "Yeah, I did." And the fellows sitting across from us, he said, "Did'you bring maple sugar pie, Thelma?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "I want a piece." And Albert said, "I want a piece." Raymond sat beside of us, and he said, "I want a piece!" And then I took a piece, so they weren't much left. And one of the girls, she's in the nursing home now, I lived beside of her all her life. And she says, "That's Thelma's maple sugar piece and I want a piece." And she took out a piece and put it in the refrigerator for herself. So it didn't last too long.

Jane Beck: I think maybe I'm going to have to try it...

Thelma Neill: It's good. It's awful good.

Maple Sweet

When you see the vapor pillar link the forest and the sky
Then you’ll know the sugar-making season’s drawing nigh
Frosty night and thawy day make the maple pulses play
‘Till congested by their sweetness they delight to bleed away.

Then bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan
Furnish better music for the season if you can
See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow
Sweetest joys indeed we sugar makers know.

When you see the farmer trudging with his dripping buckets home
Then you’ll know the sugar making season it has come
Fragrant odors pour through the open kitchen door
The eager children rally ever calling loudly, "More!"

Then bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan
Furnish better music for the season if you can
See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow
Sweetest joys indeed we sugar makers know.

You may wax it, you may grain it, fix it anyhow to eat
You’ll always smack your lips and say it’s very, very sweet
Had David tasted some ‘neath his cedar palace dome
Maple sweet had got the praises of the honey and the comb.

And bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan
Furnish better music for the season if you can
See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow
Sweetest joys indeed, we sugar makers know.

So you say you don't believe it? Take a saucer and a spoon
Though you're sour than a lemon you'll be sweeter very soon!
For the greenest leaves you see on the spreading maple tree
They sip and sip all summer and the autumn beauties be.

Then bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan
Furnish better music for the season if you can
See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow
Sweetest joys indeed, we sugar makers know.

And for home, or love, or any kind of sickness it’s the thing
Take in allopathic doses and repeat it every spring
’Till everyone you meet at home or on the street
They’ll have half a mind to bite you, for you look so very sweet!

Then bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan
Furnish better music for the season if you can
See the golden billows, watch their ebb and flow
Sweetest joys indeed, we sugar makers know.

Dans le temps des sucres

Dans l'temps des sucres, nous sommes tous invités,

Sans trop de luxe, pour aller en manger.

Quand tout est préparé,

Les œufs, le lard salé,

Le pain pour la trempette,

Un flacon pour fêter, ça c'est pas bête !

Partons en route, Les hommes partent en avant,

Dessur la croute, les paniers à la main.

Les femmes suivant de près,

En blouses et en gilets,

S'écrièrent à tue-tête :

« Préparez les palettes pour la sucrette ! »

De la cabane s'écrient tout en chœur,

Les filles, les femmes, le front couvert de sueur.

Les hommes de leur côté,

Pour montrer leur gaieté,

Se font l'écho des femmes,

Se crie à plein gosier : « V'là la cabane ! »

On se décharge des paquets, des paniers,

Qu'on met en charge à chère moitié.

Les hommes tout aussitôt,

S'arment de leurs couteaux,

Préparent les palettes,

Pour qu'on peut s'écrier : « La tire est prête ! »

Pour la trempette,

On s'arme tous d'un plat,

Et on émiette le pain pour ce mets-là.

On l'arrose aussitôt,

Du bon sirop bien chaud,

Et avec la cuillère,

On s’emplit le belly sans trop d’misère.

« Entrez la neige ! » s'écrie le sucrier,

Dans la chaumière, « ¨Ça commence à gonfler ! »

Chacun dût s'approcher

Avec son plat glacé,

Et avec sa palette,

Comme un soldat armé d'sa baïonnette.

Quelle malchance, nous sommes tous écœurés,

La tire commence à être trop sucrée.

Ça commence à brasser,

Ça commence à gonfler,

Non pas dans la cambuse,

Mais dans notre belly la tire s'amuse.

La pauvre route, si belle le matin,

La pauvre croute ne porte plus son chien.

Les paniers sont légers,

Mais le ventre très gonflé,

De cette bonne tire,

Qui cherche à s'étirer et à sortir-e.

Dans nos chaumières, nous sommes tous arrivés,

Sans trop d'misère, fatigués, éreintés.

Depuis mon arrivée,

J'ai entendu parler,

Que malgré toutes nos peines,

Nous y retournerons l'année prochaine.

In maple syrup season, we’re all invited

without much fuss to have some food.

When all is ready,

the eggs, the salt pork,

the bread for sopping,

and a celebratory flask—that’s not a bad idea!

Let’s get going. The men set out in front

with baskets in hand across the crusty snow;

the women, in sweaters and blouses

shout lustily:

Prepare your taffy sticks for some sweet treats!

From the sugar shack,

the women and girls call out, their foreheads covered in sweat.

The men for their part

to show their pleasure,

call out loudly:

Here’s the sugar shack!

The packages and baskets

are unpacked and the women are given charge of these;

the men get out their knives

to whittle taffy sticks

so all can shout: We’re ready for maple taffy!

To make trampette,

we crumble our bread onto our plates

and pour hot syrup over it;

and scooping it up with spoons,

we easily fill up our bellies.

Bring in the snow, shouts the sugarer,

it’s starting to swell.

Everyone lines up

with their cold plates,

armed with taffy sticks,

like soldiers with their bayonets.

What bad luck, we’re all feeling queasy;

the taffy is too sugary.

Things are stirring

and swelling,

not in the evaporator,

but in our bellies.

The poor road, so beautiful in the morning

the crust of the snow will no longer bear our weight.

Our baskets are empty

but our bellies are full

of taffy which is stretching and

trying to exit.

Back home we’ve arrived

without too much fuss, exhausted and worn out.

Since I got here,

I’ve heard say that in spite of our troubles,

we’ll do the same next year.