three week maple sugar season each year.

“Ifyou look at the sap when it’s run- ning you’ll see that it’s like a heartbeat, that it throbs,” Ray- mond explains as we are walking down to the sugarshack “The ., tree drips three times . L and then pauses. You can see an air bubble in the tube during the pause. And you know, it’s always the same.” , We pass the spot ” “ ”‘ " L' , "“6

where the Wood fam. Sugar shack with boiler in background. Tapped trees with

il us t cans and tubing carrying sap from the uphill trees to the y ed 0 heat the sugar shack. Adelaide Wood collection.

sap over an open pit. Raymond explains that they bought their present evaporator in Albert County, NB, three years ago. Everybody was changing over to oil at the time, so there were quite a few wood burning evaporators for sale.

“I was happy enough with the price they asked, but then Adelaide loves to barter, so I let her go to it, and we ended getting the whole thing for $250. ”

The evaporator, which is now housed in a shed, complete with rocking chair and auxiliary wood stove, is quite adequate for melting down the sap from the 300 trees now being tapped, but Raymond says that in some parts of Vermont they do thousands of trees at a time, and one farmer might have several of the units.

However, the operation of Raymond and Adelaide is a comfortable size and there is no trouble in selling the 40 gallons of syrup they net.

“We never go anywhere to sell the syrup, ”says Adelaide. “In fact, last year we had to limit the amount that one person could buy, there were so many people who wanted some. It would have been a shame to send anyone away empty— handed. There were people from as far as Summerside and Charlottetown knocking on the door last year. I guess the word just spreads. ” 26

Adelaide still taps a few trees each spring. With the assistance of her grandchildren enough syrup is collected for a year of family pancakes. Bobs is now in a nursing home in Summerside.

29