Continuing Series on Sugaring!

So our sugaring season is coming to a close. As I write this we're at 576 gallons. It froze hard last night and should run well today, so our goal of 600 gallons is certainly within reach. It's been a successful season on the numbers front. More importantly, though, it's been a disaster-free season; as our friend and fellow sugarmaker John Williamson points out, this is the most important thing...

One of Vermont and New Hampshire's least-known birds is the spruce grouse. This is partly because the birds live exclusively in the boreal forests of northeast Vermont and northern New Hampshire and partly because there's just not a lot of spruce grouse out there. Land-use practices over the last 300 years have reduced the size and spread of the boreal forest and created unconnected islands of habitat that isolate spruce grouse populations from one another and from the vast boreal forest of Canada...

Reader Garry Plunkett took this photo on his small suburban woodlot in Tiverton, Rhode Island. What is it? 

Every other week we run a photo of something unusual found in the woods. Guess what it is and you'll be eligible to win a copy of The Outside Story, a paperback collection of our Outside Story newspaper columns. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner's name, will appear in next week's column. 

Found this hanging from the rafters of an old barn. What is it and what was it used for?

We had some great guesses for this one, including a hornets' nest and an original DUI device (add mixed weights to either side and see if the person is sober enough to compensate). The real answer, though, as many of you guessed, is a bucket yoke. This hand-carved wooden yoke fit over a humans' shoulders and was used to haul buckets full of sap, water, and milk, among other things.

Several readers contributed stories. One shared that his mother grew up on a 20-cow dairy farm and hauled water with a yoke to the barn every day. This lasted until the 1960s, when the neighbors, J.D. Salinger and his wife, gave them an interest-free loan for an artesian well. Another reader remembers visiting his grandparents in Tennessee who hauled all their water in buckets. The grandkids had great fun lugging water every morning (extra fun on laundry day), and Granny was more than happy to take two weeks off.

 Visit our What In The Woods Is That? contest archive.