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able to produce a grade which we called "fancy" but was really graded as Grade A light Amber or as our next door neighbors in Canada called No. 1, Light Extra.

During this time some interesting activities would happen at the sugar shack. When the men's food was brought up by sleigh each day often a few packages of hot dogs were included and the men would float them in the boiling sap to cook them as a treat. When the sap was boiled down, one of the men would bring in a big tub of snow and a ladle of syrup was slowly poured onto the mound of snow creating a chewy, leathery desert that was called "sugar on snow" or "leather aprons" or "leather britches" depending on what part of the northeast you were sugaring in or came from. Because the hot syrup cooled so rapidly it did not have time to crystallize.

When the season was over the 50 gallon were shipped over to Vermont to be sold to a company that always bought our syrup. However, we had pint, quart and gallon cans that were filled for ourselves, family and friends. We kept these in our freezer because we could take a container out, let it sit a bit, pour off what we needed and then put it back in the freezer where it would be fine until we needed it again. Another treat we made during the sugar season as the syrup was brought down to the main house was maple sugar candy which was made in the rubber molds we had in the shape of maple leaves.

I can remember one season, Hazel, my mother-in-law, was in the middle of making maple sugar candy and had filled all her rubber molds. She had to wait until her molds hardened so she decided to make some donuts which she always did in a big cast iron kettle. When she was finished making her donuts she put the cast iron kettle of hot oil out onto a table on the big glassed in porch. My brother-in-law, Milam, happened to stop by because he knew Hazel was going to be making maple sugar candy that day. As he walked in and came into the closed in porch he spotted the big cast iron kettle sitting on the table and thinking it was cooled down syrup he drove his finger in to get a good amount to lick on only to find out he had stuck his finger into really hot donut cooking oil. It certainly was a lesson learned by Milam and it was a story told many times over the years, especially at sugar seasons.

Once the sugar season was over and before it became time to do the outside spring chores, the lull in time was filled with the men clearing any dead wood from the sugar bush, cutting it into

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