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| Sugaring in Cavendish 2015. Photograph by Svetlana Phillips |
I
bought a pair of bear-paw snowshoes with some Christmas money. This type is
stubby and broad, without a tail, and is adapted for getting around in brushy
or rough country. $o I was able to go into the woods despite the deep snow, and
began to do a little chopping. This was new type of work and I was not adept at
it, but in time I had plenty of practice.
Below
the house, between the road and the large mowing, is an area thru which the back brook flows,
and has always (I imagine) been lowed to remain wooded as it is no good for anything else. The growth is mixed. Maple and pine had
been logged, but a fine new scattering of rock maple had started up, and I
had a vision of a sugar bush in this convenient spot. It needed a lot of clearing
and thinning. There
were yellow birch, elm, beech, ash, and the usual weed trees such as wild cherry and soft maple, And
opposite it, the growth between the road,:. and Tracer Brook was similar. I didn't look any further
for a "wood lot,"
To be in,business, all I had to do was
put my wedges in my pocket, shoulder ax sledge, and snow-shoes, walk about a hundred yards down the road,
kick into the snowshoe harness, and step in among the trees. "And get two jobs done in one operation," I thought.
It turned out to have been good judgment, and this
is where I got our fuel during most of the years we burned wood, which was
until 1963. Several times I chopped, or had chopping done, over by the road
which is our eastern boundary, partly to eke out the supply but also to make
use of some old "gone by" trees.
But I couldn't spend all my time getting up wood.
"Where are you going to put those new chickens?" Isabel wanted to
know. So I started work on the new chicken houses, which already
existed in skeleton form. When we came, there was a good stone foundation and
part of a frame for a lean-to shed against the south side of the big. barn,
into which a doorway had been out. Altho apparently intended for cows,. it
seemed it would serve us much better for chickens, so I began making modifications.
As it was too large for our immediate needs I decided to have three
compartments; we'd use one immediately and have the remaining space in reserve.
It all needed to be roofed and floored and sheathed and was another of those
jobs, which turned out much bigger than anticipated. It had to be part-time work, which always seems to drag; also I was
"learning while doing." Fortunately there was on hand a supply of
rough-sawed boards; of uneven quality, it still saved me some expense for
sheathing.
The first of March was like spring. Such days come
to deceive, one into thinking winter is over. It induced me to make up an order
for vegetable seeds, which was fun, altho it still was months to out-door
planting time and longer yet to getting a crop. This realization took some of
the joy out of life, as we had only a few jars of
tomatoes and pickles left in the cellar and some dried beans in the attics.
Having to spend more for food really hurt.
However, keeping busy is a good antidote for worry.
There remained plenty to be done in the house. Isabel just then was scraping
and cleaning some of the old spruce panels preparatory to their being put in
place above the kitchen mantels This required that I first remove plaster-and
lath and fill up the stove-pipe hole. But before I could do that
there had to be a hole made thru the ceiling and the floor above so the pipe
could go up, and into the chimney in the bed-room: a rough and "temporary” job.
At-a much later date, in Montpelier, I came across and purchased an
unusual circular register made for just this situation, with a plate in the canter to remove for the pipe to pass thru.
Meantime a tin box with a hole in the middle (as fire protection)/had to serve, but even with
this we noticed the room was
warmer. - Of course the kitchen again was in a fine mess, but when the panels
were in place and the small strip of Sheetrock ceiling fitted in against them
it made a nice looking job.
When we first came to Windy Hill we used to be
amused by the stories of the varied uses to which a kitchen might be
put. But no longer. That March a couple of sick hens were only the
first in a procession over the years of live stock needing special attention
and warmth... Eggs had increased to about sixteen a day, almost 100%, one of
them weighing “a quarter of a pound. But still no calf.
By mid-month the winter really started to break.
Altho replenished quite regularly the snow was settling, and
as the frost ca,me out of the roads they degenerated
to that horrible condition of muck and ruts which annually brought traffic
practically to a standstill. In short, it was "mud season." The
children thought this was fine as they began a monthly holiday, meant to coincide
with the bad going.
As many days were pleasant I continued the
tree-pruning, doing six tipples and the big old crab. This was interrupted when
Dan put his foot through the floor of his stall, and I found it so rotten it
required complete replacement. I luckily was able to get at the mill (the same
piece that ground my meal in the fall) some thick bridge planks of elm, the best
of flooring for a stable. Dan was scarcely earning his keep, with only an
occasional job now that the wood was all hauled. Nor was it good for him to stand
so much of the time in the barn. We used him for occasional trips to the
village, as when
Wy and I drove him to the freight office to pick up some rolls of roofing for
the chicken-house.
A boy calf at last arrived,- on March 17 so of course
he was "Pat." It was quite an event for the children, who had been
most interested in progress. Fortunately there were no complications other than
"caked bag" which is not unusual. The cowls udder became hard and feverish, partly, in this case, because the calf was limited in his
energetic efforts (bunting and kneading and working at the teats) to get food. We wanted to wean him
promptly. Hot compresses and rubbing
in a salve, together with regular milling, soon worked a cure.
While this was going on we were setting a few sap
buckets, borrowed with spouts - from our good neighbor. "Don't bore the
holes too deep" he cautioned me. "The sap layer of wood is just
inside the bark. Put them on the sunny side, not much higher than the snow
level." "I don't suppose we will need very much," I
remarked. He snickered. Well it takes about a barrel of sap to make a gallon of syrup." I was skeptical, but
he wasn't kidding. We emptied n dozen
buckets, more or less full, twice a day for a couple of days and soon had pans
of sap steaming on every stove in the house before it snowed and spoiled the
run. And we finished off enough syrup for breakfast one morning.
The bad weather also held up my plan to paint the
eves in the rear of the house before moving the scaffold to the front. (The
neatly-laid stack looked beautiful.) Instead, I prepared some seed
"flats" (shallow boxes of any convenient size) with earth and
planted yellow tomatoes, onions, cabbages, and cauliflowers,• a bit
late as it proved; these things start slowly and should be in by Lincoln's Birthday.
They require resetting to give them greater strength and plenty of room, before
going out doors about mid*May for most things, but not before Decoration Day
for tomatoes which are susceptible to late frost. While I was inside Isabel
kept me company working on her first hooked rug: she became very skillful at
this, and also braiding. - But it seemed the cold and snow would never end.
The chickens had suffered during the cold, and from
their heavy production; another was sick and one died. But our new cow
"Maria" proved to be a good producer, giving better than ten quarts a
day. Pat was growing fine: before the end of two weeks I estimated his weight
between 60 and 70 pounds, and already he was more than Wyeth could handle. He also was almost weaned. The udder
congestion had cleared up so we could use the milk, and with such abundance we
set it in pens over night when the cream could be skimmed off and soon Isabel
had enough to make our first butter,- a great occasion.
Then I got the crank separator to function and this turned out to be more
efficient. Pat had to be satisfied with skim milk, but he was too greedy to
notice the difference.
At last came a few days of good weather so I could do the painting job.
We then moved the staging to the front of the house.
Sugaring in
Cavendish:
The short sugar season in 1934 was not unusual, as “sugaring” can very from
year to year in its duration along with the quantity and quality of the syrup
produced. The same year that the Tiemanns made their first batch, Homer
Kingsbury, who lived several miles away on Chubb Hill, sold 14 gallons to the
First National Store in Ludlow at $1.23 per gallon. Read Sugaring in Cavendish
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