Welcome Spring

Our maple sugaring season came to a close last Tuesday, with the boiling down of thirty six gallons of sweet sap into syrup.  The day was a balm-- sunny, and relatively warm, with temperatures rising up into the upper 30's (F), the robins and cardinals singing, and the enthusiastic warble of the house finch ebulliently announcing spring from the tops of utility poles and spruce trees.  

Since we tapped our first sugar maple, the broad, old granddaddy sugar maple, in late January, I have made the rounds, towing buckets sloshing with sap in a garden cart, visiting 6 maple trees spread up and down Hawk's Hill, marking output at every stop in a notebook, and hauling the sap to a lidded plastic trash can tucked in the north shade of our old trailer.  

The persistent cold kept the sap from flowing much until the last few weeks, but then the days above freezing and the nights below freezing got the sap dripping into one gallon plastic water jugs or sliding down the vinyl tubing into 6 gallon super-buckets with lids.  Some days I arrived to find gallon jugs filled to overflowing with sap. Though the cold shortened the season, the icy temperatures froze the sap, and we were able to concentrate the sap for free by just removing the ice chunks (mostly water).  

Once we got critical mass in the sweet sap-- 30 gallons -- we watched for a good weather day.  The ideal day is not too windy (for fire safety), with no precipitation (my evaporator site is out in the open), and warm-ish.   The night before boiling down the sap, I raked dead grass thatch away from the evaporator site, shoveled out last year's ashes and charcoal, and reassembled the fire bricks and the new stovepipe chimney.

Our maple sugaring set-up follows the thrifty plan -- second hand fire bricks from a construction resale center, secondhand stainless steel buffet table pans bought by the pound at a metals recycling center, a new chimney (the old one rusted through) and clay from the creek to stop the smoke from seeping through the gaps between round stovepipe and squared-off bricks.  I set the stainless steel buffet table pans in their places, and hauled several old wicker chairs from the trailer porch down to the sugaring site.

In the morning, I hauled a truckload of wood from the woodpile, filled the pans with trash can sap, caulked the gaps between pans and bricks, around the chimney and lit the fire.  The fire caught, and the little evaporator stove ran like a rocket stove when stuffed with sticks.  Soon, the sap began to boil, and clouds of water vapor puffed away.  As the sap boiled away in the larger pan, I heated more sap in the small, square pan to refill the evaporator pan.  The key in sugaring is to keep the sap boiling constantly.  Adding cold sap to the pan would kill the boil, and I'd be left restarting the boiling process.

So, the day progresses with ladle full by ladle full of sap being transferred from the little square pan to the larger rectangular pan only to boil away, and then get replaced again.  Logs and sticks get stuffed into the fire pit.  Standing dead sticks get hauled up out of the woods, sawed or chopped into pieces, stacked and then fed into the blazing fire.

At times, I'd take a break, kick back in a seat and listen to the sounds of the birds, pet my dog, sketch in my nature journal, or ladle boiling sap into a mug for tea.  Those moments fill a soul with peace, the reconnecting with the natural world, the pause to take in the energizing beauty of a simple March day.  "Thou restoreth my soul."

My friend and her son stopped by to help with the wood chopping, and the sap ladling, and to chit chat.  The balm of friendship added to the day's joy.

As the sun set into the woods that evening, I spread wet dirt on the fire to douse it, and pulled the evaporator pan off the fire, hauling it up to a picnic table, where my beloved held the syrup filter (catches the ash and other flurg) over a pot, and we poured off the almost-syrup into pots to finish in the house.  We made sure the fire was out with lots of water; we put away the chairs, gathered up tea mugs, ladles and extraneous equipment, and David drove me and my 2 pots of amber nectar slowly up to Soulstice to finish in the kitchen there.

By 11:00 that night, I had poured finished sap into sterilized jars, and was off to the bathtub, while the little lids began to pucker with that satisfying "puck" sound.  In the morning, sitting on the kitchen counter were 71/2 pints of syrup to pour over stacks of flapjacks, or to give to friends and family.

The first crop of 2014 has been harvested on Hawk's Hill.   Not a crop that we have sown but one received freely from nature. A sweet gift of the earth, purchased with physical effort and a day spent in the fresh air of a sunny March day.

May you receive the sweet balm of nature in your daily life, and may you get the opportunity to taste the nectar of real maple syrup.
Betsy