“A sap-run is the sweet good-bye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.”
John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons, 1886

“When made in small quantities—that is, quickly from the first run of sap and properly treated—it has a wild delicacy of flavor that no other sweet can match. What you smell in freshly cut maple-wood or taste in the blossom of the tree, is in it. It is then, indeed, the distilled essence of the tree.”
John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons, 1886

The maple trees are tapped and the saps-a-flowing! So far this has been a pretty good year. The alternation of warmer days and cold nights in which the sap runs, and then a period of below freezing days and nights that stop the sap-flow, make for a longer season. Making maple syrup is a right of spring for those of us in the northeast. With Mother Nature in charge, one never knows what type of sugar-making year it will turn out to be.

If only we had a sugar woods full of trees like the sap cow. The sap cow is a big maple that, in years past, has managed three taps and overflowed bucket after bucket of sap, if you don’t empty them often.

A look at the canopy and you can see why. It has a big, full spreading canopy that, no doubt reflects the huge sap pumping root system down below we can’t see.

 

Other trees, particularly the preferred sugar maples, are strong producers. This is what you want to see during a sap run, bags and buckets full. But, that’s a lot of heavy lifting and carrying.

 

 

 

 

 

Making the work easier is where tubing is involved. The sap runs from the tree into the mainline and then into the sap tank to be pumped up to the sugar-house, so much easier than toting buckets full of sap.

 

 

 

 

One of the most important jobs during sugaring is stoking the evaporator. Too much fire and you burn the pan, too little, and the syrup takes forever to get finished. Get it just right and some of the sweetest, most delectable liquid on earth, flows from the spigot.

 

 

 

 

While there is much work involved in making maple syrup, it is also a time of friendship and camaraderie. It’s a time when friends come together and stand around the evaporator and catch up on what’s happened over the long, cold winter.

 

 

 

 

 

We drink maple tea with sweet sap dipped straight from the pan and drizzle fresh syrup over steaming stacks of waffles or pancakes. The Native Americans also found this a time of fun, family, and friendship. Goodbye long winter, hello spring!