Grandson John just pulled in last night and was telling about seeing a group of mule deer out in Dakota. I said that they are quite a lot larger than our native white tails and he said they are and seem to be smarter, too, for if they come to the highway and there is a lot of traffic, they will turn and go the other way.

 Then Monica and I had to tell him about our experience with the wild Tom Turkey that had been hanging around our backyard. There is an old wild apple tree that grows right in the fence line and so had been left for a post and had grown real brushy and never bears anything but fruit the size of golf balls. There were a few of these still in the tree and we saw him trying to land in the tree but it was so thick he couldn't get inside. There is a feeder for small birds near the house and next thing we knew he was perched on top of that. We had run out of sunflower seeds bu Pat brought some home.

 Got a call from my sister Luty the other day and was surprised at how well she seemed. She has Parkinsons and Kim her daughter hires a young woman for help and companionship if she and Nicolas will both be away. He has just taken on a big job in Wisconsin, large enough so that he had to hire a helper. He will be in Hawaii for three weeks around Easter time. He is getting to be well known.

 I failed to mention that while Luty and I were in the hospital in Minnesota, Norma hopped on a plane and came out to visit and offer any help she could give us. She visited me in the hospital, Luty had already gone home. My case reminded me of the time when Ag had just come the stable from the bright sunshine and stepped into the drop and fell and hit her head on the concrete floor. She ended up with not just two black eyes but her whole face was black. Because she wasn't sure what had happened, she attracted quite a lot of attention, and doctors. One was all set to do a heart catheterization till Pat explained what a drop was. She explained the difference between a drop in a dairy barn and a drop in a bucket. 

 Speaking of buckets, you used to see the trees near a building for boiling sap, each one bore a metal bucket and if the syrup maker was proud of his product each pail had a metal cover high in the middle and sloped to drain any rain out of the pail and kept some of the dirt and bugs out, too. Today's syrup makers use plastic tubing to run the sap from one tree to another and finally right into the big flat pan or evaporator. Your old-timers used to burn trimmings from the maple trees or some other weed. The larger producers now burn fuel oil. 

 Ag and I used to have a neighbor that used to collect old tires for fuel. When he finished a session of sap boiling, it made you wonder just who that real dark hued man next door really was. 

 We didn't have any big equipment, so Ag used to do our boiling on the cookstove in the kitchen. Usually had to replace some wallpaper afterward. both sides of Lisle Road used to have big healthy maples growing there and we found that a ‘37 Ford trunk would hold two 40-quart milk cans so that's how we would bring the sap from the trees to the house. Ag's mother's relations had at one time owned property on that stretch of road, known for a time as Bradt Town. So it was easy to get permission to tap those trees.