There’s a bit of melancholy here, a yearning; the sap is running and the maple syrup season in full swing but these buckets are sidelined (“Put me in, coach!!”). But at least they’re piled in an accessible place; ready for a hardy soul – still sugaring the old way – to put them to use once again.
Howard Prussack, a farmer friend, once reminded me how physically demanding maple sugaring can be; getting the sap from buckets to the evaporator requires a lot of heavy lifting. Of course most large scale operations now use saplines, and the power of gravity.