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Waterbury's Maple Sugar Oracle

Mr. Timothy Wheeler predicts a good season for the sap-flow

A wonderfully small-scale piece of forgotten Vermont folklore: a local man's yearly forecasts of the maple sugar harvest, taken seriously enough to print.

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Burlington Weekly Free Press · February 20, 1885 · Page 4

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WATERBURY, VT.

Mr. Timothy Wheeler of Waterbury, Vermont, is the oracle of maple sugar prophecy in this region. He predicts that the coming sugar-season will be one of the better seasons, giving an average yield of three or four pounds to the tree, and of good quality. Mr. Wheeler claims that he is rarely at fault in his prognostications of the sap-flow.

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