It's Maple Sugar Time!

Tomorrow is the start of March Break here in Ontario.  High school and primary schools are off for all of next week.  Traditionally, this is also the big week for maple sugar bushes to start operation, as they can be guaranteed a big turnout with a lot of people taking the week off with their kids. 

 

 

 

 Some of the sugar bushes are mediocre at best, but the really good sugar bushes have the trees tapped where you can see them, some traditional displays of how sap was boiled down by pioneers and native North Americans, a horse drawn wagon ride, the inevitable pancake house where you can enjoy some freshly cooked pancakes with some locally prepared maple syrup ... and the sugar shack where you can buy your own tin or bottle of syrup and a maple-shaped candy or two.

This is an old picture of my brother and I with our goats 'Jenny' and 'Tinker', a mother & daughter.  Behind us are the woods where my family would collect and boil down our own maple sap into delicious maple syrup for about two weeks.  The entire portion of our sugar maple woods were on a hillside.  We only tapped about 20 trees, but those trees were good producers and there was always enough syrup to get us through most of the year. 

 

We all loved helping with the sap, as it was an opportunity to spend long days in the woods ... the snow crystalline by this time of year, and it was finally just warm enough to hang your winter jacket on a tree branch and sit by the fire in your sweater ... the sun warming the ground and the trees all around you ... the chickadees singing their spring song "spring's here!  spring's here".  We had tamed the chickadees (and an occasional nuthatch and woodpecker) to come to our hands for sunflower seeds.  So they were always flitting around us through the woods begging for some seeds and making us laugh with their funny adorable ways.  We were a family that always had sunflower seeds in our pockets!

 

This is the bottom of our wooded hill where the creek has flooded the flats in springtime.

 

 

Once the sap started running, the trees were tapped with little spiles (spouts) and the buckets hung from the spiles.  Ahhh, the sound of the steady plink, plink, plink as the sap started to fill the bucket!!  SPRING TIME!!  It was our job as kids to regularly walk the path and collect the sap from each tree, and lug the heavy pails back to the fire.  It got tricky along the path because we were walking on a hill, and the snow was packed down on the narrow trail and slippery ... there were more than a few buckets spilled into the ground through the 37 years of living there. 

 

We had a fire burning non-stop during the day in an oil drum set on its side.  My dad fixed an old woodstove door to the opening and cut a rectangle in the top to hold a large steel tub where we poured the sap and it slowly boiled and thickened over the fire (40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon of syrup) . 

 

The best part was testing the sap to see if it was thick enough.  We didn't have the fancy gadgets you can buy for checking sugar content, we just tested it by dipping a spoon in, taking a sip and  agreement all round "yep! it's ready!"  My dad was always just a bit stingy here and wouldn't boil it down to really nice thick syrup, and it was always just a bit runny, but it still tasted great.  Nothing like the taste of maple syrup that's been boiled down over a wood fire.  There was always a little bit of woody bits settled in the bottom of each jar!  Mom would bottle the maple syrup in the kitchen with sterilized jars, and it was with a sense of satisfaction that we'd admire the rows of dark golden syrup lining the counter. 

 

After my two sisters, brother and I left home, we still managed to meet up again during the March break to help with the sap boiling with all our kids in tow.  The cousins all learned to love this special time too. 

 

The country property was sold a few years ago, and I'm not sure if the new owners followed our tradition.  My parents were always saying "Oh, I don't think we'll boil the sap down this year, it's getting too much for us".  But they must have sensed everyone's disappointment, for they continued on a smaller scale until the year before they left (Mom was 82, Dad was 86).  It's one of the many things that will always remain close to my heart about living in the country and spending time with family.  Whenever we have a spring day with crystalized snow and I can smell woodsmoke from a neighbour's woodstove, I just close my eyes and I'm back in a flash to the woods that I love with the sap boiling in the pot!

 

Pancakes and syrup anyone?

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Wendy