If you have never been to a sugarhouse, you should really get out and experience it. The whole proccess is fascinating and the fact that the delicious syrup we enjoy starts its life as very watery sap is incredible. Find a small sugaring operation near you and go spend an hour. Our good friends Wayne and Cathy Fifield (802-333-4467) in Thetford Center keep our farm stand in good supply all season long. Their sugarhouse is open to visitors, just give a call.
I was sitting at the computer today reviewing seeding schedules when I looked out the window at the sunshine and was suddenly aware of how thirsty I was and how much I needed to stretch my legs. I left the spreadsheets behind and ambled out into the bright warmth of the day.
My feet sank slightly into the soft earth of “mud season” as I walked over to the sugar maple in front of the house. Listening thoughtfully I could hear the birds singing, greenhouse fans blowing, and the slight drip of liquid falling into liquid. I tapped the galvonized bucket that was attached a few feet up the tree: it felt heavy. I slid back the lid and, sure enough, it was already half full of crystal clear sap. Carefully, I lifted the bucket off of the spout imbedded in the tree’s trunk, brought the lip of the bucket to my own lips and slowly tilted it back. The cold sap filled my mouth and I savored its slight maple sweetness before swallowing. I took another sip and realized that my eyes were now closed as the sap flowed into my mouth, as though I were kissing a beautiful woman. The sun was beaming on my face and the air was full of the smell of warm damp earth. I thought I heard a killdeer in the field.
Maple sap flows when the days are warm and the nights cold in the spring. I have seen it flow in a drip so constant that it almost appeared to stream out of the tree. It is as clear and rarefied as water, cold as the ground, and just barely sweet and maple flavored. Jake told me a few years back that he and his friends used to put some of the sap from their sugaring operation into Ball jars and freeze it for summer consumption. I haven’t had any luck with that (it tends to sour), but I do love to drink the sap as a seasonal libation. There is just nothing like walking up to a tree and drinking it.
Maple is “slow food” in so many ways. Anyone who has ever boiled or attended a small scale boil (sugaring-off) knows that, aside from the company and the beauty of the process, it is like watching water boil - for hours. Forty gallons of sap takes me 9 hours on my small (3×3 foot) evaporator outside over a wood fire to produce a single gallon of syrup. A few years back I actually froze several gallons of sap and used it to brine my Thanksgiving turkey: an interesting idea, but not worth the large scale effort (since then I just make the brine from well water and add some of my own syrup).
As I have said, I can’t sugar this year. I miss it. But I am certainly enjoying my favorite spring drink.
My two favorite springtime sounds in Vermont: the ground water of mud season sucking back into the earth through unseen pores, and the resonant plinking of sap into empty buckets as it begins to flow in the morning.
