mantilo: a miscellany

Expanding on my Jack Wax/Maple Taffee/Sugar on Snow article, here are some excepts as promised from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods concerning candy-making with snow and maple syrup. I have most of “Dance at Grandpa’s ” up, but left out the part with Uncle George playing his trumpet.

I made sugar on snow this past weekend. Trader Joe’s sells a 25 oz. bottle of grade B, dark amber syrup for eight dollars. It looks like a bottle of wine. I used half a cup, which boiled down into a generous serving of candy for one. I found eating it with a fork was best. It was very sweet. I find that although I like those heavy dark syrups like maltose and molasses, I can only have a little maple syrup at a time.

Some reading notes:

• Laura is four or five here, which makes Pa thirty-five, Ma thirty-two, Grandpa fifty-nine, and Grandma sixty-one.
• Patty-pans are small dishes, sometimes with a frilled rim, that is used for making patties or pasties. Look up “patty-pan squash” for an interesting-looking vegetable.
• Maple sugar is twice as sweet as regular sugar.
• Initially I thought that the paternal grandparents were up in Burnett County, WI, which is too far for Pa to go there and back in a day. However, they also live in Pepin County, about thirteen miles north of Laura’s immediate family.

Excepts from:
Little House in the Big Woods
By Laura Ingalls Wilder

Christmas
One morning she boiled molasses and sugar together until they made a thick syrup, and Pa brought in two pans of clean, white snow from outdoors. Laura and Mary each had a pan, and Pa and Ma showed them how to pour the dark syrup into little streams onto the snow.

They made circles, and curlicues, and squiddledy things and these hardened at once and were candy. Laura and Mary might eat one piece each, but the rest was saved for Christmas day.

The Sugar Snow
For days the sun shone and the weather was warm. There was no frost on the windows in the mornings. All day the icicles fell one by one from the eaves with soft smashing and crackling sounds in the snowbanks beneath. The trees shook their wet, black branches, and chunks of snow fell down.

When Mary and Laura pressed their noses against the cold window pane they could see the drip of water from the eaves and the bare branches of the trees. The snow did not glitter; it looked soft and tired. Under the trees it was pitted where the chunks of snow had fallen, and the banks beside the path were shrinking and settling.

The one day Laura say a patch of bare ground in the yard. All day it grew bigger, and before night the whole yard was
bare mud. Only the icy path was left, and the snowbanks along the path and the fence and beside the woodpile.

“Can’t I go outside to play, Ma?” Laura asked, and Ma said:

“‘May,’ Laura.”

“May I go out to play?” she asked.

“You may tomorrow,” Ma promised.

That night Laura woke up, shivering. The bed-covers felt thin, and her nose was icy cold. Ma was tucking another quilt over her.

“Snuggle close to Mary,” Ma said, “and you’ll get warm.”

In the morning the house was warm from the stove, but when Laura looked out of the window she saw that the ground was covered with soft, thick snow. All along the branches of the trees the snow was piled like feathers, and it lay in mounds along the top of the rail fence, and stood up in great, white balls on top of the gate-posts.

Pa came in, shaking the soft snow from his shoulders and stamping it from his boots.

“It’s a sugar snow,” he said.

Laura put her tongue quickly to a little bit of the white snow that lay in a fold of his sleeve. It was nothing but wet snow on her tongue. She was glad that nobody had seen her taste it.

“Why is it a sugar snow, Pa?” she asked him, but he didn’t have time to explain now. He must hurry away, he was going to Grandpa’s. Grandpa lived far away in the Big Woods, where the trees were closer together and larger.

Laura stood at the window and watched Pa, big and swift and strong, walking away over the snow. His gun was on his shoulder, his hatchet and powder horn hung at his side, and his tall boots made great tracks in the soft snow. Laura watched him till he was out of sight in the woods.

It was late before he came home that night. Ma had already lighted the lamp when he came in. Under one arm he carried a large package, and in the other hand was a big, covered, wooden bucket.

“Here, Caroline,” he said, handing the package and the bucket to Ma, and then he put the gun on its hooks over the door.
“If I’d met a bear,” he said, “I couldn’t have shot him without dropping my load.” Then he laughed. “And if I’d dropped that bucket and bundle, I wouldn’t have had to shoot him. I could have stood and watched him eat what’s in there and lick his chops.”

Ma unwrapped the package, and there were two hard brown cakes, each as large as a milk pan. She uncovered the bucket, and it was full of dark brown syrup.

“Here, Laura and Mary,” Pa said, and he gave them each a little round package out of his pocket.

They took off the paper wrappings, and each had a little, hard brown cake, with beautifully crinkled edges.

“Bite it,” said Pa, and his blue eyes twinkled.

Each bit off one little crinkle, and it was sweet. It was better even than their Christmas candy.

“Maple sugar,” said Pa.

Supper was ready, and Laura and Mary laid the little maple sugar cakes beside their plates, while they ate the maple syrup on their bread.

After supper, Pa took them on his knees as he sat before the fire, and told them about his day at Grandpa’s and the sugar snow.

“All winter,” said Pa, “Grandpa has been making wooden buckets and little troughs. He made them of cedar and white ash, for those woods won’t give a bad taste to the maple syrup.”

“To make the troughs, he split out little sticks as long as my hand and as big as my two fingers. Near one end, Grandpa cut the stick half through, and split one half off. This left him a flat stick, with a square piece at one end. Then with a bit he bored a hole length-wise through the square part, and with his knife he whittled the wood till it was only a thing shell around the round hole. The flat part of the stick he hallowed out with his knife till it was a little trough.

“He made dozens of them, and he made ten new wooden buckets. He had them all ready when the first warm weather came an the sap began to move in the trees.

“Then he went into the maple woods and with the bit he bored a hole in each maple tree, and he hammered the round end of the little trough into the hole, and he set a cedar bucket on the ground under the flat end.”

“The sap, you know, is the blood of a tree. It comes up from the roots, and when warm weather begins in the spring, and it goes to the very tip of each branch and twig, to make the green leaves grow.

“Well, when the maple sap came to the hole in the tree, it ran out of the tree, down the little trough and into the bucket.”

“Oh, didn’t it hurt the poor tree?” Laura asked.

“No more than it hurts you when you prick your finger and it bleeds,” said Pa.

“Every day Grandpa puts on his boots and his warm coat and his fur cap and he goes out into the snowy woods and gathers the sap. With a barrel on a sled, he drives from tree to tree and empties the sap from the buckets into the barrel. Then he hauls it to a big iron kettle that hangs by a chain from a cross-timber between two trees.

“He empties the sap into the iron kettle. There is a big bonfire under the kettle, and the sap boils, and Grandpa watches it carefully. The fire must be hot enough to keep the sap boiling, but not hot enough to make it boil over.

“Every few minutes the sap must be skimmed. Grandpa skims it with a big, long-handled, wooden ladle that he made of basswood. When the sap gets too hot, Grandpa lifts ladlefuls of it high in the air and pours it back slowly. This cools the sap a little and keeps it from boiling too fast.

“When the sap has boiled down just enough, he fills the buckets with the syrup. After that, he boils the sap until it grains when he cools it in a saucer.

“The instant the sap is graining, Grandpa jumps to the fire and rakes it all out from beneath the kettle. Then as fast as he can, he ladles the thick syrup into the milk pans that are standing ready. In the pans the syrup turns to cakes of hard, brown maple sugar.”

“So that’s why it’s a sugar snow, because Grandpa is making sugar?” Laura asked.

“No,” Pa said. “It’s called a sugar snow, because a snow this time of year means that men can make more sugar. You see, this little cold spell and the snow will hold back the leafing of the trees, and that makes a longer run of sap.

“When there’s a long run of sap, it means that Grandpa can make enough maple sugar to last all the year, for common every day. When he takes his furs to town, he will not need to trade for much store sugar. He will get only a little store sugar, to have on the table when company comes.”

“Grandpa must be glad there’s a sugar snow,” said Laura.

“Yes,” said Pa, “he’s very glad. He’s going to sugar off again next Monday, and he says we must all come.”

Pa’s blue eyes twinkled; he had been saving the best for the last, and he said to Ma:
“Hey, Caroline! There’ll be a dance!”

Dance at Grandpa’s
Laura loved Grandma’s house. It was much larger than their house at home. There was one great big room, and then there was a little room that belonged to Uncle George, and there was another room for the aunts, Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby. And then there was the kitchen, with a big cookstove.

It was fun to run the whole length of the big room, from the large fireplace at one end all the way to Grandma’s bed, under the window in the other end. The floor was made of wide, thick slabs that Grandpa has hewed from the logs with his ax. The floor was smoothed all over, and scrubbed clean and white, and the big bed under the window was soft with feathers.

The day seemed very short while Laura and Mary played in the big room and Ma helped Grandma and the aunts in the kitchen. The men had taken their dinners to the maple woods, so for dinner they did not set the table, but ate cold venison sandwiches and drank milk. But for supper Grandma made hasty pudding.

She stood by the stove, sifting the yellow corn meal from her fingers into a kettle of boiling, salted water. She stirred the water all the time with a big wooden spoon, and sifted the meal until the kettle was full of a thick, yellow, bubbling mass. Then she set it on the back of the stove where it would cook slowly.

It smelled good. The whole house smelled good, with the sweet and spicy smells from the kitchen, the smell of a clove-apple beside Grandma’s mending basket on the table. The sunshine came in through the sparkling window panes, and everything was large and spacious and clean.

At supper time Pa and Grandpa came from the woods. Each had on his shoulders a wooden yoke that Grandpa had made. It was cut to fit around their necks in the back, and hallowed out to fit over their shoulders. From each end hung a chain with a hook, and on each hook hung a big wooden bucket full of hot maple syrup.

Pa and Grandpa had brought the syrup from the big kettle in the woods. They steadied the buckets with their hands, but the weight hung from the yokes on their shoulders.

Grandma made room for a huge brass kettle on the stove. Pa and Grandpa poured the syrup into the brass kettle, and it was so large that it held all the syrup from the four big buckets.

Then Uncle George came in with a small bucket of syrup, and everyone ate the hot hasty pudding with maple syrup for supper.

Uncle George was home from the army. He wore his blue army coat with the brass buttons, and he had bold, merry blue eyes. He was big and broad and he walked with a swagger.

Laura looked at him all the time she was eating her hasty pudding, because she had heard Pa say to Ma that he was wild.

“George is wild, since he came back from the war,” Pa had said, shaking his head as if he were sorry, but it couldn’t be helped. Uncle George had run away to be a drummer boy in the army, when he was fourteen years old.

In the kitchen Grandma was all by herself, stirring the boiling syrup in the big brass kettle. She stirred in time to the music. By the back door was a pail of clean snow, and sometimes Grandma took a spoonful of syrup from the kettle and poured it on some of the snow in a saucer.

Laura watched the dancers again. Pa was playing “The Irish Washerwoman” now. He called:
“Doe see, ladies, doe see doe,
Come down heavy on your heel and toe!”

Laura could not keep her feet still. Uncle George looked at her and laughed. Then he caught he by the hand and did a little dance with her, in the corner. She like Uncle George.

Everyone was laughing, over by the kitchen door. They were dragging Grandma in from the kitchen. Grandma’s dress was beautiful. Too; a dark blue calico with autumn-colored leaves scattered over it. Her cheeks were pink from laughing, and she was shaking her head. The wooden spoon was in her hand.

“I can’t leave the syrup,” she said.

But Pa began to play “The Arkansas Traveler,” and everybody began to clap in time to the music. So Grandma bowed to them all and did a few steps by herself. She could dance as prettily as any of them. The clapping almost drowned the music of Pa’s fiddle.

Suddenly Uncle George did a pigeon wing, and bowing low before Grandma he began to jig. Grandma tossed her spoon to somebody. She put her hands on her hips and faced Uncle George, and everybody shouted. Grandma was jigging.

Laura clapped with her hands in time to the music, with all the other clapping hands. The fiddle sang as it had never sung before. Grandma’s eyes were snapping and her cheeks were red, and underneath her skirts her heels were clicking as fast as the thumping of Uncle George’s boots.

Everybody was excited. Uncle George kept on jigging and Grandma kept on facing him, jigging too. The fiddle did not stop. Uncle George began to breathe loudly, and he wiped sweat off his forehead. Grandma’s eyes twinkled.

“You can’t beat her, George!” somebody shouted.

Uncle George jigged faster. He jigged twice as fast as he had been jigging. So did Grandma. Everybody cheered again. All the women were laughing and clapping their hands, and all the men were teasing George. George did not care, but he did not have breath enough to laugh. He was jigging.

Pa’s blue eyes were snapping and sparkling. He was standing up, watching George and Grandma, and the bow danced over the fiddle strings. Laura jumped up and down and squealed and clapped her hands.

Grandma kept on jigging. Her hands were on her hips and her chin was up and she was smiling. George kept on jigging but his boots did not thump as loudly as they had thumped at first. Grandma’s heels kept on clickety-clacking gaily. A drop of sweat dripped off George’s forehead and shone on his cheek.

All at once he threw up both arms and gasped, “I’m beat!” He stopped jigging.

Everybody made a terrific noise, shouting and yelling and stamping, cheering Grandma. Grandma jigged just a little minute more, then she stopped. She laughed in gasps. Her eyes sparkled just like Pa’s when he laughed, too and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

Suddenly Grandma stopped laughing. She turned and ran as fast as she could into the kitchen. The fiddle had stopped playing. All the women were talking at once and the men were teasing George, but everybody was still for a minute, when Grandma looked like that.

Then she came to the door between the kitchen and the big room, and said:
“The syrup is waxing. Come and help yourselves.”

Then everybody began to talk and laugh again. They all hurried to the kitchen for plates, and outdoors to fill the plates with snow. The kitchen door was open and the cold air came in.

Outdoors the stars were frosty in the sky and the air nipped Laura’s cheeks and nose. Her breath was like smoke.
She and the other Laura, and all the other children, scooped up clean snow with their plates. Then they went back into the crowded kitchen.

Grandma stood by the brass kettle and with the big wooden spoon she poured hot syrup on each plate of snow. It cooled into soft candy, and as fast as it cooled they ate it.

They could eat all they wanted, for maple sugar never hurt anybody. There was plenty of syrup in the kettle, and plenty of snow outdoors. As soon as they ate one plateful, they filled their plates with snow gain, and Grandma poured more syrup on it.

When they had eaten the soft maple candy until they could eat no more of it, the they helped themselves from the long table loaded with pumpkin pies and dried berry pies and cookies and cakes. There was salt-rising bread, too and cold boiled pork, and pickles. Oo, how sour the pickles were!

They all ate till they could hold no more, and then they began o dance again. But Grandma watched the syrup in the kettle. Many times she took a little of it out into a saucer and stirred it round and round. Then she shook her head and poured the syrup back into the kettle.

The other room was loud and merry with the music of the fiddle and the noise of the dancing.

At last, as Grandma stirred, the syrup turned into little grains like sand, and Grandma called:
“Quick, girls! It’s graining!”

Aunt Ruby and Aunt Docia and Ma left the dance and came running. They set out pans, big pans and little pans, and as fast as Grandma filled them with syrup they set out more. They set the filled ones away, to cool into maple sugar.

Then Grandma said:
“Now bring the patty-pans for the children.”

There was a patty-pan, or at least a broken cup or a saucer, for every little girl and boy.

They all watched anxiously while Grandma ladled out the syrup. Perhaps there would not be enough. Then someone would have to be unselfish and polite.

There was just enough syrup to go round. The last scrapings of the brass kettle exactly filled the very last patty-pan. Nobody was left out.

The fiddling and the dancing went on and on. Laura and the other Laura stood and watched the dancers. Then they sat down on the floor in a corner, and watched. The dancing was so pretty and the music so gay that Laura knew she could never get tired of it. All the beautiful skirts went swirling by, and the boots went stamping, and the fiddle kept on singing gaily.

Then Laura woke up, and she was lying across the foot of Grandma’s bed. It was morning. Ma and Grandma and Baby Carrie were in the bed. Pa and Grandpa were sleeping rolled up in blankets on the floor by the fireplace. Mary was nowhere in sight; she was sleeping with Aunt Docia and Aunt Ruby in their bed.

Soon everybody was getting up. There were pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast, and then Pa brought the horses and sled to the door.

He helped Ma and Carrie in, while Grandpa picked up Mary and Uncle George picked up Laura and they tossed them over the edge of the sled into the straw. Pa tucked the robes around them, and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle George stood calling, “Good-by! Good-by!” as they rode away into the Big Woods, going home.

The sun was warm, and the trotting horses threw up bits of muddy snow with their hoofs. Behind the sled Laura could see their footprints, and every footprint had gone through the thin snow into the mud.

“Before night,” Pa said, “we’ll see the last of the sugar snow.”

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