Maple Sugaring in Concord
It's a terribly good thing February is the shortest month, it being that
miserable gray time between when the snow melts and when the trees bud and
the warblers return. Certainly maple sugaring has made many a long New England
February and March day more joyful when sweet sap rises inside the trees,
an unseen sign of Spring. Mystery surrounds the origins of sugaring,
though birds seemed to have figured it out first: several species of
overwintering birds feed at the sapsicles that hang from maple branches.
How humans deduced that sap was delicious and figured out how to preserve
that sweetness year-round, no one knows for certain anymore.
Although Massachusetts produces 50,000 gallons of syrup annually, we may
be quickly forgetting the Spring rite of sugaring. Environmental changes
are causing the decline of sugar maples, and sugar bushes (large stands
of maples) are becoming hard to find. Competitor trees, salt on the
roads, changing winters, and our interest in less expensive cane and corn
sugar means fewer and fewer trees are tapped every year.
Sugaring is both a slow labor of love and flood of time-dependent
activity. Sap runs only when the days are above freezing and the nights
below. You can't force the tree to run in the summer, or slow down when
you've got too much sap to boil. You're dependent on the weather and
entirely at the call of the trees.
On the days when sap does run, the trees gush and give so generously one
can barely keep up with the collection. A good tree can produce gallons
of sap in a single day. Since it takes 40 gallons to produce one gallon
of syrup, it's good to take all you can get without being so greedy you
wear out the tree. Sap must be boiled quickly after it is collected or
it ferments.
Traditionally, sap was reduced to syrup by throwing hot stones into cold
sap. Today producers have reverse osmosis and all sorts of fancy,
technical ways of removing all the water. But for the most part, sap is
still boiled over wood fires in giant evaporator pans. It takes time,
friends, and decks of cards to patiently boil until the sap reaches 219
degrees, a temperature that sap can only reach when the sugars are
concentrated enough.
As our forebearers did for unknown numbers of centuries past, this year in Concord we tapped our local trees -- this time, close to 50 at the Library, Emerson
Field, The Old Manse, Heywood Meadow and private yards around town. The
sap was boiled at Gaining Ground Farm behind the Thoreau Birthplace house.
It was a satisfying community effort, and every tree contributed to the
pool. We will all remember drinking cold, clear sap from the
trees... hearing the plink of drops of sap in empty buckets... the sound of the
drill making holes for spiles... the smell of charred wood... sticky hands
and muddy boots... hot, sweet steam rising off the pan like earthbound
clouds.
For more information about maple sugaring in Massachusetts, go to the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association website.
Art Credits: Photos courtesy of Gaining Ground. Page designed by Windfall.
From smaller buckets into big barrels.
