When he had made the round, he drove to the camp, filled the kettles, and lighted the fire.

While it started he cut and scraped sassafras roots, and made clippings of tag alder, spice brush and white willow into big bundles that were ready to have the bark removed during the night watch, and then cured in the dry-house.
He went home at evening to feed the poultry and replenish the ever-burning fire of the engine and to keep the cabin warm enough that food would not freeze.

With an oilcloth and blankets he returned to camp and throughout the night tended the buckets and boiling sap, and worked or dozed by the fire between times.

Toward the end of boiling, when the sap was becoming thick, it had to be watched with especial care so it would not scorch.

But when the kettles were freshly filled the Harvester sat beside them and carefully split tender twigs of willow and slipped off the bark ready to be spread on the trays.
"You are a good tonic," he mused as he worked, "and you go into some of the medicine for rheumatism.