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Sugaring John Putnam: Oh, there use to be some awful big trees in there. Sugar, sugar trees. Boy, we use to take off some nice syrup from there. Mmm…when I come back from Marlborough I got sugar hungry and by gees I went bought 90 buckets off of my brother-in-law and I made some spouts. Gutted up Sumacs. Cut off Sumacs and made spouts enough for oh, gee wiz, I had enough _______ that night for 90 buckets. And I bought a couple of pans made purpose for that business, ya know. Have an arch, big ones around the back and the front, front one was a smaller one. And I got sap from ______wood. I worked my head off. Night and day. I still had a job waiting for me down at the saw mill cuz they were down for something. I forget now why. Mud. And then I got word, "We're ready. Come back to work". And I had Pete come down. Christine come down and stayed. He finished up the sugaring. I made 40 gallons. Old Wet Willie, what a church member he was. (Laughs) Well, he come down one Sunday morning with his Oxen and old sled "Come on" he says "And we'll go out and get you a load of wood" We went up and cut a lot of them dead chestnuts. I was surprised. Boy, cripe. 40 gallons and you sold most of that? Sure. And you got…? $2.00 a gallon. I was downtown there once one day and see a fella from Ashuelot and he always had some for my father, ya know. Every time my father made syrup he always wanted a gallon of that syrup. Well, I told him I was going to make some. He said "If you can make some as good as your father use to, I'll take a gallon." By gees, I said, "Alright". One morning, of course there was snow on the ground, crust. I took the Allen truck and I went right down to cross lots. His place and I says, "Here's a gallon of syrup" I says, "You can test it if you want. If you don't want it, I'll take it back". And, I knew him pretty well. He took the cap off and turned some of it out in a little dish and tasted of it. He says, "You ain't gonna take that back". We could…them old pans used. My father had two old pans. They was old, old ones. You could make the nicest tasting syrup, by God. Beat the evaporators all the devil. You could get a taste, real stuff. We use to have gallon cans, sure, same as they do now but…there weren't no fancy top on them. What was your sugar wood? What did you burn? Everything wood. Everything we could get. Pine? No, no, not much pine. I did, the time I sugared, the last time, there was an old big pine down in the pasture, oh…they was a big one. They was almost as big as your leg, ya know. I use to climb up in, begin up top, cut ‘em off, let ‘em down. Then I'd lug ‘em. Lug ‘em to the sugar house. This wood that he come down with, that the oxen got, were dead chestnut. That made good wood. |
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