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The Woods

Memory & Woodcarving by Donald M Cramer


Every Christmas or so I receive my sister Jan's installment of the family history and musings,
and they trigger all sorts of reflections and memories. Once Jan suggested that others also
contribute. I'm better at missiles than missals, but I can see from other family writings that
there is a gene in there somewhere. As I approach my retirement, these reminders of my roots
and beginnings become increasingly important to me, and long-forgotten memories keep
popping up.

Some of my fondest early memories are of the woods The woods comprised maybe a third of
our 84 acre farm in the northern New York community that in earlier days had been called
South Champion. Our dairy pasture blended into the woods in a symbiotic relationship: the
woods cooled the cows on hot summer afternoons, and the cows pruned the woods to allow
bovine and human passage Fertilization added to the summer ambiance.

The woods were an essential part of the family sustenance, both physical and spiritual. Nature,
for me best exemplified by the woods, was a real part of my spiritual upbringing. When
Grandma Cramer died, I went to the woods to pick violets, which went into her grave with her. I
knew the woods in detail: where the prettiest violets, the sweetest blackberries, the fuzziest
pussy willows and the pinkest spring beauties grew, and where to cross the streams to get
there. Due to Mother's interest in botany, 1 knew the names of most of the flora, and could
recognize them in or out of season. In the woods, I could and did enjoy total isolation from the
rest of humanity, and see nothing but the pristine beauty of a naturally-manicured setting.

Summertime was the best time for this solitary communication with nature. The edges of the
woods provided a bounty of wild berries-black raspberries ("black caps"), then blackberries,
and occasional gooseberries and currants, supplementing the elderberries and strawberries
from the fields and surrounding hedges in jellies and pies (with the mandatory "better get the
ax. ma" for the crust). But my best enjoyment was in the picking, in the beautiful serenity of the
woods, with nobody to tell me how, where, or when

Autumn in the woods was beautiful. But I expect any who might read this know the glory of the
mixed hardwoods (maples, beeches) and evergreens (hemlock and spruce) of the northern
New York woods. Their fall contribution to our sustenance was fuel for the two stoves in the
farm-house: the heater in the living room, surrounded by the comfortable chairs and the "sofa"
that once was great-grandma Edith's (actually Mary Jane, I think JRC) portable midwife's
bed. and the kitchen stove which was the source of nearly everything we ate. at least in
summer (all but August).

Woodcutting was the fall's primary chore (after the milking, of course). As kids. Bob or I would
hitch Molly and Duke to the wagon, drive across the creek, up the hill on the far side of the
valley and across the pasture or the "8 acre lot "and into the woods. We cut up fallen branches
into transportable lengths, or as we got older (or with Pa's help) felled an ailing tree. As a boy I
mastered the operation of one end of a two-man cross-cut saw. and later a new-fangled chain
saw We hauled the wagon-length pieces to the woodpile behind the house. There they were
cut into stove length on the buzz-saw du jour, sometimes an old car Pa had converted by
removing the chassis and attaching a huge saw blade to the drive shaft, and later a higher-
tech version powered by our new (well, maybe 30 year old) Wallace tractor. (Early in life, Pa
had lost a toe to a buzz saw. User-friendly they were not.) The wood was then split at our
leisure. I still enjoy cutting wood.

As fall progressed into deep winter (November or December) the wagon was replaced by the
sleigh. This was a really hi-tech contraption. The working surface was a simple 5 by 12 foot
plank structure, with brackets around the edges for stakes cut from readily available branches
The hi-tech part was the runners, which as I later learned in the helicopter business could
properly be called "fully articulated," as they could do a controlled swivel and turn in any
direction. The front runners were swiveled to accommodate the irregular local terrain (there
was lots of that), and were steered by the horses But here's the hi-tech part: the rear runners
were steered by the front runners. They were cross-linked by chains so that when the front
runners turned left, the rear runners turned right. Believe it or not, this kept the rear runners
following almost exactly in the same tracks as the front runners when turning, rather than
having to create new tracks. This arrangement made life much easier for the horses, who
could themselves be belly-deep in snow. This same sleigh was also used, among other things,
for rescuing us and the neighboring kids when the school bus couldn't negotiate our back
roads or got stalled in a snow bank on Route 12.

But back to the woods. Again in the late winter and early spring, the woods provided physical
and spiritual sustenance: a small source of cash and a family togetherness uncommon at other
times. The first cue. in March was "sugar snow," snowflakes huge and fluffy and gentle, rather
than hard and stinging. What really counted was warm days (afternoon temperatures above
freezing) and cold nights that started the sap flowing in the maple trees We loaded sap
buckets onto the sleigh from storage in the attic of the house. Most of the buckets were metal
(again, note the hi-tech), though we used a few wooden buckets and more could be found
discarded in the woods. Every mature maple was ''tapped," some of the larger trees twice. (Pa
chided me for once tapping a very unproductive elm.) The tapping consisted of drilling, with an
old-fashioned auger, a maybe inch diameter by 3 inch deep hole into a tree in a spot that
hadn't been tapped recently, hammering in a metal spout, and hanging a bucket from the
spout. The hole, spout and bucket were usually as low as permitted by the snow, so it could be
reached after the snow had melted. Drilling hundreds of holes was a man's job, hard on the
arm. Anybody could hang the bucket.

On the good (previously described) warm day, as much as 10 gallons of sap could collect, one
drop at a time, in each bucket We poured the sap into
pails to be carried and dumped into a large metal
gathering tank, which was mounted on a wooden sled
drawn on a non-steering chain behind the hard-working
horses. Driving (or riding) the sap sled was a sporty event.
The sled had rough wooden runners, and was very mobile
(it had to go over snow banks, fallen logs, through
swamps and across streams) and was likely to go in any
direction. The sap-filled tank was hauled to the sugar shanty located more or less in the center
of the woods where it was emptied via a long wooden trough into a wooden storage vat inside
the sugar shanty.

Inside the sugar shanty, the sap was boiled down (a 30:1 ratio comes to mind) in the
evaporator. The evaporator was a large metal pan. maybe 5 feet by 15 feet. but
compartmented so the sap had to negotiate probably 100 feet of bubbly travel from the inlet
(from the storage vat) to the syrup draw-off spigot. The evaporator pan sat on a metal firebox
having a voracious appetite for firewood, which in a good year had been cut in the fall and
stacked in the sugar shanty. (I don't remember very many of those good yearswe often cut
the wood as needed.)

On a typical boiling day, Pa would start the fire (after the barn chores were done) and get the
evaporator boiling. He then climbed to the roof of the shanty, and opened the down-wind side
of the cupola to let the steam out. Ma could then see the steam on the horizon and would
trudge up the hill to take up the boiling duties. She would keep the fire burning right, make the
adjustments as needed to the evaporator plumbing, and draw off maybe three or four one- or
two-gallon batches of the finished maple syrup. It was "done" when the syrup would drain off a
square-ended scoop in a "sheet" While she was boiling, all available help went out to collect
more sap or firewood. Lunch was eaten near the warmth of the evaporator, where home-grown
eggs were boiled for really great egg salad sandwiches, accompanied by home-made dill
pickles. It was a long day of hard work.

However, this was also a fun day. with a more festive atmosphere than I ever experienced at
the more customary fall harvest time (I don't remember fall harvests worth much celebrating --
the farm land was margin-ally productive at best, and none of us enjoyed farming.) The whole
family pulled together in a supportive way, with even my otherwise useless sisters (just kidding.
Nancy and Jan) helping. The best part is that the bickering ceased, and we were a loving
family unit. We even entertained friends, who also enjoyed a day in the woods helping with
gathering the sap and riding the sap sled.

As warmer weather approached, the snow melted, the streams grew, and the sap buckets
became hard to reach. The early spring flowers
emerged, first the delicate spring beauties on a sunny
knoll, then the hepaticas and the pussy willows. Violets,
adder's tongues, trillium, wild apple blossoms and jack-
in-the-pulpits would appear later. We collected the sap
buckets, and hauled them back to the house (now in the
wagon rather than the sleigh) to be washed by Ma, carried by us kids to the field next to the
house for drying, and stored in the attic. Pa packaged the syrup into one-gallon cans, with
custom-designed labels, no less. The good stuff he sold on a day-long trip to the
Chaumont/Three Mile Bay area, where he was known and might get a whopping dollar per
gallon. The not-so-good stuff we ate on pancakes throughout the year. We would also invite
friends and neighbors (the Greggs, Downses, Aunt Dot and Grandma Cramer, Uncle Charles
and Aunt Isabel, maybe some church folks) in for "wax on snow" (see some of Jan's earlier
musings). We could do wax-on-snow until the last snow disappeared from the local ravines,
maybe in May or early June. Normally the "wax," syrup thickened by additional boiling, was
served inside on a pan of snow. But I also remember having wax-on-snow bank outdoors, on a
not-hard-to find beauty behind the house that had curled to a table-top height just right for us
kids

Sugaring was a Cramer event, which few of our neighbors could or bothered with duplicating. I
expect my grandfather did it, until he died in 1936 (the year after I was born) and Ma and Pa
moved onto the farm. We continued throughout my childhood, at least until I left for college in
1953, and maybe until the farm was sold around 1960. (Jan tells me she and Nancy developed
a remarkable usefulness after I left.) Sugaring meant a lot to me. I still occasionally dream of it.
When Phyllis decorated a ceramic coffee set, she decorated my cup with a sugaring scene.

In 1993, I returned for my Copenhagen Central School class of '53 40th reunion. I also went
back to the woods. I got permission from the family living in a trailer where the house had
stood. Only the concrete block milk house that Pa and I built for the milk inspectors still stood A
horse looking for all the world like Duke was grazing in the overgrown pasture. I walked across
the creek (the rickety bridge was long gone) and climbed the hill where I thought had once
been the wagon trail, now totally reclaimed by thorn apples, blackberries and erosion. I
crossed the 8-acre lot, still used by a neighboring farmer for hay, and approached the woods.
The trees and bushes were no longer manicured by their bovine partners. The huge,
impermeable goliaths, which had served as my landmarks in my youth were not to be seen.

I fought my way to the slope where the sugar shanty had once stood, and found only a thicket.
I located the still-babbling stream, the only land-mark that hadn't disappeared. I backtracked to
where the shanty should have been, where blackberries had replaced the building, the
sawdust piles from the buzz saw, and the skid marks from the sap sled. Searching in earnest
for some remnant, I was truly thrilled when I found a still-painted piece of the wooden sap
storage vat, a section of the galvanized evaporator pan, and maybe the lead pipe that served
to empty the sap gathering tub. I photographed these nearly invisible pieces, but left them
where they will probably never again be seen by loving human eyes. Sometime, when an
increasingly sentimental old engineer comes across these photos, he may remember what
they are and what they mean.

Donald Marvin Cramer, Georgia, December 31, 1996

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