As the sun advances northward from its long southern sojourn and the north and south winds lock and interlock for supremacy, the frost and fury line gradually recedes and the more direct actinic rays of the sun thaws out the hard frozen timber, the crows hold their annual matrimonial pow-wow for pairing; blue birds come and a snow crust often forms at night hard enough to hold a man if not a team. It is then the sugar maker begins to think of his annual effort. All up-to-date plants have substantial buildings, running water and heaters for washing; use galvanized iron tanks for gathering and storage; galvanized iron or tin buckets and sap spouts and also one of the more modern evaporators. This often represents a cash outlay quite sufficient to handle some business in town and is in use only two or three weeks in the year, the rest of the time being idle unless the owner includes the making of cider apple jellies in the fall and provides himself with a copper evaporator for the purpose. If the sugar maker has been wise he has erected his sugar house along side a bank or declivity at least 30 feet high and easy of approach so that he can handle all the sap by gravity from the gathering tank downward to the straining tank and on to the holding tanks and then into the evaporator; each being well below the other. He uses an iron arch and stack which he keeps well coated with asphalt varnish to prevent rust and in case the draft of his arch is not good uses a Fenn rotary chimney top on his stack. Of course he has an ample supply of wood fuel that has been provided a year or more in advance under an adjoining shed so that it may be _very_ dry for a quick fire is one of the main factors of rapid evaporation so necessary for good product, and another quite as important is that the evaporator room be built for it, with a space of about 5 feet all around it, and the walls sealed close to make a hot air draft upward. He does not need to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by providing sound rock maple wood. Any timber will do if dry; old dry pine stumps are the _ne plus ultra_ and hemlock boughs, a good second. [Illustration: AT THE CLOSE OF THE SEASON; BUCKETS DRYING IN THE SUN.]