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Maple Sugaring
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There is an old saying: “Spring is the reward for
those who live through the winter.” How do we know that spring has arrived?
Let’s count the ways: my neighbors, Jackie and Al Smith, are back from
Florida looking trim and healthy; Charlcie Delehanty has reported seeing two
immature and one mature bald eagles as the river opens near the sorting gap;
Jessie’s Bait Shop has stored their ice augers and hung out their “Maple
Syrup For Sale” sign in front of their newly updated fishing equipment; and
geese can be seen feeding happily on Mary Burns’ front lawn along the the
Raquette River, recently freed of ice.
Spring is the harbinger of many good things, one of which is that it is the
time sap begins to run in the maple trees and heralds the beginning of the
sugaring season.How many readers as youngsters have boiled sap in their
kitchen? How many of you have seen the paper peel off the walls as steam
from the boiling sap filled the kitchen? (It takes about 40 gallons of sap
to make 1 gallon of syrup. The rest goes up in steam.) Sadly, making maple
syrup, a sustainable, responsible use of a resource, has almost disappeared
locally.
There a was a period when it was an honored tradition. There were a number
of sugar bushes located nearby, each with its own sugar house. The sugar
house, usually with a vented roof, contained the evaporator, which in
simplest terms consisted of two flat metal pans sitting over a long firebox
known as the arch. These pans were divided into multiple interconnected
channels, creating a maze that the sap had to follow as it became hotter and
hotter and ever more dense.
Sweet smelling steam would chortle from these shacks, producing an
enveloping mist not unlike an early spring cloud-laden rain shower. The only
thing that could rival that nostalgic smell might be the delicious aroma
that would waft its way from blocks in the vicinity of the Sonny Boy Bakery
(if you were downtown) or from the Gold Medal Bakery (if you were uptown).
A tantalizing, overpowering, luscious signature presence that cannot be
adequately described. You have to experience it. Of course, that would mean
you would have had to have been there at a time when milk came in glass
bottles with a 2-inch collar of thick cream, and kids could go into the
neighboring saloon and get a “growler” of beer for their father, who
undoubtedly deserved it after a 12-hour day of intensive labor.
“Rush the growler” (a metal pail with a lid) was an expression of the time.
The word “rush” had an entirely different connotation in those days. With
its strict discipline, woe unto any youngster who didn’t get that growler
home with the greatest dispatch and with it’s contents intact.
For all of its romances as an ancient tradition, sugaring was (and still is)
hard work. It meant washing hundreds of buckets; it meant tapping many, many
trees by hand with a brace and a bit; it meant gathering scores of buckets
(each weighing at least 30 pounds), which had to be carried to a holding
tank, where it was then sledged to the Sugar House. If the sap was running
good you stayed all night boiling it into syrup. Remember, too, that it took
roughly a full cord of wood (4’x4’x8’) to make 5 gallons of syrup. Even in a
small operation, that could mean as much as 30 full cords that most often
had to be “bucked” up with a buck saw or a two-handed cross-cut saw. Small
wonder that an old-age sentiment after a bone-wearying season was, “Glad to
see it come, glad to see it go.”
Next column: Tupper Lake’s Master Sugarers. |
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