Maple Sugaring. David K. Leff
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flow of sap, and drawing off finished syrup is hypnotic. The smell, the moist warmth, and the sound of boiling and dripping produce a sugarmaker’s high—a kind of sensory joy forged in hard work and the pleasure of making something natural and nourishing.
Rising steam is also a welcome-mat for company. While a sugarmaker is always puttering around his evaporator, once a steady boil has begun there is plenty of time. In fact, boiling sap can be said to be made of time—minutes, hours, sometimes days. It’s not just time for processing a food—it’s time for visitors who work in offices and retail shops or whose jobs are focused on computers or carpentry to share in something attached to natural cycles and a deep heritage whose simplicity never fails to intrigue. They become part of something elemental and feel good about it. Describing his sugarhouse as second only to a general store as a gathering place, Burr Morse calls it a “focal point for pointless jabber and sweet triviality.” Time in a sugarhouse speeds up with visitors, and slows almost painfully when you’re alone. Sugaring not only produces syrup—the time it takes also generates stories.
Although a passerby once dialed 911 because he thought the steam was smoke and my garage aflame, the guys at the firehouse knew better, and a phone call to me kept the sirens silent. But since they were together anyway, they came by in a pumper to satisfy their sweet tooths with samples right off the evaporator. We swapped a few lies and had some laughs at the caller’s expense.
Like the pulse of sap, the flow of visitors is unpredictable. They come in dribs and drabs and occasionally in a steady stream. Sometimes I could go for hours on a sunny weekend and not only run the evaporator without interruption, but get through the paper and several magazines that had been waiting months on my bedside table. Other times, I’d be startled from a late-night fugue by a friend I thought had hit the pillow hours ago. It was an ongoing open house requiring no invitation, and the number of guests was yet another measure of time.
I liked it best when children came by and would stare moon-eyed into the steam as if they’d entered a fairy’s lair. Sometimes they would arrive with parents nervously working like sheepdogs to keep them from the hot arch or tripping on an errant bucket or hose. Older ones would bicycle over on warmer days. At the bank or the barber they might be treated to a lollipop or some candy around Halloween, but a paper thimble of near-syrup right off the evaporator was a wonder-working potion. Whenever there was fresh snow, they’d eagerly collect a bowlful and gasp as I’d drizzle hot syrup over it, creating maple taffy before their eyes. Often on weekend afternoons the sugarhouse would be filled with the screeching chirp and shout of children.
“We’re drinking tree blood!” some third-grader would inevitably shout. Empathic kids, perhaps recalling a vaccination, sometimes asked if the drill hurt the trees. Older ones would eagerly help collect sap, though between spillage and a few drinks I’d have been better off without their labor. Nevertheless, their puppy-like enthusiasm was a bigger payday than I ever got from a gallon of syrup. Familiar with the process, my own kids and those of my neighbors would turn into mini tour guides, and I cringed to hear my own words and intonations echoed in their squeaky voices.
Living two blocks up the hill, my buddy Alan was a frequent visitor to the sugarhouse, where, like Thoreau, I kept three chairs on sabbatical from the summer terrace—one for myself, a second for company, and a third for society. He’d see steam rising, come in without a knock, plop down in one of the plastic-webbed seats, and pick up the newspaper with little more than a taciturn “hello.” After he’d digested a few column inches, we’d be off discussing Middle East politics, the power company rate increase, or some nearby mayor charged with corruption. His blood churning with the news, he’d get up and stretch, lean over the evaporator and breathe the steam like a person with a cold savoring a vaporizer.
At such times, my fire department friend Bill and his wife Teri might be passing by on one of their long walks, and we’d catch up about our kids or the latest fitting or hose lay on one of the trucks down at the firehouse. I’d be adjusting the flow of sap into the back pan or turning the draw-off valve and pouring syrup into a cone filter to remove niter, inert sand-like minerals that precipitate out of boiled sap. We’d chat while I moved about the machine, and the conversation might morph into a discussion of the town budget or an impending snowstorm.
The sugarhouse had the natural conviviality and easy talk of a neighborhood tavern or coffee shop, where you never knew who’d pop in or where the conversation might lead. Sometimes an impromptu party might erupt when someone came by with a few beers or cups of coffee. Toward the end of the season, when the last, usually very dark syrup was for my own consumption, I’d sometimes boil hot dogs in the slightly sweet back pan while talk turned to the new baseball season.
Some of the deepest conversations I’ve ever had occurred while I boiled into the wee hours when a friend or neighbor who tossed and turned with troubled sleep came by under the silence of stars. There were problems on their mind and no one to talk to past midnight unless they saw my light and rising steam. The visit might be generated by an argument with a spouse, fears about a teenager on drugs, or a sick parent barely clinging to reality and life. Perhaps it was the mesmerizing pulse of the boil or soothing sweetness of the steam, but personal details I’d never hear in daylight came spilling out. Maybe there was something insular and comforting about the sugarhouse, brightly lit, warm and moist in the icy dark. They could stare at the boil while they spilled their guts. I fussed about the evaporator, something to fill the silences and keep us from the awkward tension of constant eye contact.
Once a mere acquaintance nearing forty came by to tell me a sheriff had served divorce papers that afternoon. He leaned over the evaporator and began sobbing, perhaps hoping the moisture would mask his tears. He’d been unfaithful, and his wife would not accept his apologies and promises. Another time, a friend had gotten a late-night call about the death of her mother. Distraught and shaking, she didn’t want to awaken anyone and so drove more than five miles to see if I was boiling. There was always a powerful but brief intimacy, and I got to know a handful of people in dimensions few saw. Of course, it was an ephemeral closeness, because like the old saw about Las Vegas, what was said in the sugarhouse stayed there.
Among the most electric moments in the season were the three or four times I’d pack syrup into containers. I’d rewarm it on the stove in my kitchen or, in subsequent years, in a separate boxy stainless container heated with propane and made for the purpose. The room would fill with maple smell as the syrup reached the right temperature. I’d filter again and test the density with a hydrometer. I’d taste it, check the color, and ladle the hot, golden liquid into plastic jugs or log cabin-shaped tins, screw on the caps, and turn them upside down to seal as they cooled. I’d recruit my kids and friends to help. A glow of satisfaction overtook me as the last step in production was completed and the secret of how much syrup the year would yield was revealed quart by quart, pint by pint. Each bottle seemed a notch in time. The counter, floors, and equipment grew sticky as the process wore on, and the last job of a long day was washing down.
Toward the end of the season, when there was no threat of sap re-freezing in the buckets, I’d often be collecting late at night to ensure I got the full day’s run. Where once I was bundled in a coat and thick gloves, I now worked in shirtsleeves. In a fog of sublimating snow and squishy muddy ground, I’d go out with a flashlight to check for moths, ants, or other spring-awakening creatures that might land in a bucket. Some of the sap could be cloudy from bacteria on a warm day, or might have turned as yellow as urine and bitter after buds opened on the tree’s branches, heralding the season’s end. My last few collections were to the otherworldly sleigh-bell-like sounds of spring peepers who called from a nearby swamp. This last “frog run” of sap produced the darkest, strongest-flavored syrup, my favorite.
Sometimes I sugared into the first week of April, but usually the season ended in late March. On a sunny day I’d pull my spouts with a soft hammer tap and toss the buckets into the back of my pickup. Ending the season was sad, but I was eager to have my schedule back and no longer abandon my life to the vagaries of weather and sap flow.
Of course, the season wasn’t over when it was over, because all the buckets, pails, taps, storage tanks, hoses, valves, and tools had to be sanitized and put away. The evaporator had to be scrubbed, including the build-up of carbon beneath the pan from