Sugaring

The season got off to a shaky start this year. Last Wednesday Feb 6, the forecast was for warm days and cool nights: the magical combination of weather that produces sap in maple trees. Wednesday morning was positively balmy so I headed out with my buckets and taps and drill and hammer to test a few trees. After the first tap I knew it was in fact running so I went to the second tree. When you are drilling a 2 1/2 inch hole in a tree some distance from your house, you need a battery operated drill. We keep the battery on the charger all the time with one spare to charge while the other is in use. While the charger said the battery was fully charged, apparently that wasn't quite true. The drill ran out of power most of the way through the second tap so i had no choice but to wait for the second battery to charge. in the meantime, winter was coming back in the form of icy cold winds and by Friday/Saturday 15 inches of snow. Snow is a good thing for tapping because while the day gets up to the high forties sometimes in the season, with the trees' base in a foot of snow,it means it won't get too warm. When it does get too warm the sap stops, the bugs come and what sap is left in the bucket turns sour. Now most of our maple trees are conveniently located on the side of the driveway where it is easy to reach them. The tree largest trees (I don't know heir dimensions but it would take at least three grown people with heir arms outstretched to reach around them) are about 200 feet from the road in the woods. The snowstorm meant that in Sunday when the temperatures promised to return to ideal and we finished doing the taps, we had to do the last five on snowshoes. The only way it would have felt more authentic is if we collected them on horseback. We in fact collect in in my tractor. It was my birthday present from my husband and sons last year; an old gravely with a cart behind which is perfect for the buckets as well as cord wood.It has made our lives much easier. Before that we collected it by hand or by wheelbarrow. I'll take the tractor any day. It was how I learned to drive at about 11 years old on my father's old Ford tractor.I never feel so much at peace as on the tractor. When I say buckets, you are probably picturing those quaint metal buckets with lids on them that you used to see driving through Vermont and New Hampshire. For the record you probably won't find them there anymore either; them use tubing strung between the trees. But when we started doing this 13 years ago (modestly with 1 tree and 1 tap)we used what we had on hand which was an empty milk gallon jug. Even when we added taps, we still used empty milk cartons. Most of the time they worded fine. But it is often windy during sugaring season and when the milk jugs were empty, they would occasionally blow off the trees and we'd had to find them. Then we happened on the perfect solution. Ice tea and apple juice also come in gallon jugs but it is made of a heavier, non recyclable plastic which is heavy enough to stay on a tree when it is empty and the wind is blowing. We are occasionally tempted by the look of those metal buckets but they hold more than a gallon and carrying two of them through the woods to the tractor does not appeal. One gallon on each arm is heavy enough! So the sap did start to run; we had nine taps in 7 trees and we are now busy boiling it down. Each of the trees along the driveway has one tap and two of the massive tree in the woods have two taps. We could do more and still not hurt those huge trees but there is a limit to how much we can boil and still each have full time jobs. Because we do all this without that most expensive of investments: an evaporator. As I write there is a 20 quart soup pot almost boiled down downstairs while another 20 quart pot is upstairs from taps I collected at 11 this morning. The pot downstairs was started at 10:30 last night and boiled until about midnight when i went to bed. I finished the another one from yesterday first thing this morning and started the full one again. There are still four gallons of sap in the refrigerator and I'm guessing about 7-8 more gallons to collect by 5 tonight. I have to leave for work and Perry will take over. Usually I work at 10 and I can just collect it and maybe bring it to boil for an hour. Sap just left at room temperature will turn sour quickly. It is easier on weekends when one of us is bound to be home and the sap boils all day. By the way that is one of the joys of being a hobbyist. For the month of February and part of March our house always smells like maple syrup. Of course the absolute best part is having all that maple syrup in the downstairs fridge. We regularly have waffles and blueberry pancakes. Of course when the house is infused with the smell of maple, sometimes you just don't want to wait for breakfast. The you do what my sons did. When the smaller pot of syrup is finally finished (it has a certain glassy look that you come to know) and you pour in into the quart jars, because it is syrup, there is always some left i the pot. You can take a scraper and get most of it out but a better way is to scoop out some vanilla ice cream and let the pot's heat melt the ice cream. You swirl it around until all the reast of the syrup is mixed with the ice cream and then taste a little bit of heaven.