Leah was finished cutting the apples. She needed to pee. She needed to all the time now. Both hands on the table she pushed up and stood, Connie now watching her. Leah rocked and steadied herself and said, “Your bread’s ruined.” She went to the entry way and pulled on a shawl and overcoat, wrapping herself easy for the outhouse. She looked back and Connie was watching her. Leah said, “Of course you feel that way.”

Connie stood from the table and said, “I punch that loaf down and let it rise again it’ll be fine. Won’t hurt it a bit for patience.”

Leah nodded. Turned for the latch into the woodshed and without looking back said, “Bread’s not all will rise you wait a little.”

They’d been sugaring day and night a week, the sap daytimes seeming to pour from the trees so both Connie and Norman hiked in the woods with the yokes, the snow shrinking each day so the trails became quickly packed enough to walk without snowshoes. The south side of each tree spread a small stage of bared brown leaves outward. They brought up the second older and smaller gathering tank and placed it on a scaffold beside the sugarhouse to empty the gathering tank into so when dusk fell and the wind dropped and temperatures fell they had two tanks’ worth of sap to boil off. One of them would take the team and sledge down to do evening chores and eat supper while the other fired the kettle and began boiling. The first would climb back after dark with a cake tin of supper wrapped in towels.

The two would work into the morning hours, stoking the fire to keep a low rolling boil, skimming off the surface with a paddle and then plunging the paddle in a downward twisting turn to keep the thickening sap even. When it would froth too high they’d drag a lump of lard on a long string through to settle it. A long-handled dipper would pour forth a thin apron when it was syrup, a thicker sheet when it was ready to sugar. As a kettle finished they worked fast to pour it off into the long sugar molds. Then the kettle was refilled and the fire pokered up and there would be a brief time before the fresh sap came to a boil. Norman had a demijohn of cider and would pour out a couple of drams into the sugar dipper and sip at it until it was gone, Connie taking it once or twice for small swallows. Both too tired to talk. Norman would go outside and look out over the starred valley of the farm, his back to the sugarhouse. Then return to the work, the short chimney sending up a straight white plume while steam from the kettle broke out under all sides of the roof. They would finish by half past two or three and be back up in the woods by eleven the next morning. The soft spring air itself invigorant to the work.