In early April, the Ojibwe visit their camps, the men to repair the camps and the storage vats of hollowed logs, and to cut fire wood, the women to see that the sap buckets and mokoks are scrupulously clean and watertight. If some can not be repaired, rolls of birchbark are there to make new ones. The whole family then move to the camp and live in the large wigwam, while they make sugar for a month. During the sap flow, a man can chop holes and set taps into from two to three hundred trees in a day. The first flow of sap is the best, and it gets to be of a rather poor quality by the end of the flow. The Ojibwe will not use the night flow of the sap, which they say is bitter, so they cease collecting an hour before dark. Gathered sap is stored in hollowed basswood log vats, and covered over with birch bark to keep it clean. Boiling in the iron kettles is done much as the white man does it, except that foam is dissipated by stirring with a fresh brush of a spruce branch. The syrup is strained through a cloth and recooked in two or three quart quantities until it is ready to sugar. Then, while still warm, it is poured into a wooden trough, where it is pounded and crushed with a heavy wooden paddle as it hardens. It is stored in covered birch bark baskets called mokoks, of from twenty-five to seventy-five pounds capacity. The sugar is graded according to its whiteness and stored away. Sap is often added to the dregs in the kettles and a second grade sugar is secured. To waste or spill any of the sap is considered an affront to their deities, who punish such an act by causing the sugar to shrink after it is made. ALISMACEAE (WATER-PLANTAIN FAMILY)