“What’s that?”, a visitor coming into the sugarhouse will often ask.

It takes me a minute, I almost ask back, “What’s what?”, and then I realize that they’re wondering about the steady “kaplug, kaplug, kaplug”, that I don’t really notice anymore. It’s the pump, sending cold maple syrup from a barrel into the vat to be heated for canning, or pumping hot syrup from the vat through the filter press into the canner. We can syrup at least two days a week, often three, and I miss the sound when it’s not pumping!

It’s sort of like my heart beating, sort of like the pulsators during milking, hense the cow photo. Regular, a tempo that means all is well, progressing through the job at hand. “Kaplug, kaplug, kaplug”. Many years of my life I milked twice a day, every day. Many years before that I spent every milking as a child in the barn, swinging on my little swing in the walkway-two braided baler twines for rope on either hand, and a worn board seat-or riding my pony back and forth the length of the long barn, or leading a balky calf back and forth. When I got bigger I fed cows and fed calves, hoed the cows and spread new bedding, and brushed and clipped the cows. Always that steady sound of the milkers in the forefront of the background.

Now, I listen to syrup pumping!

Who’s in this photo? My husband, Dan. He was a dairyman.