When we get a winter thaw that lasts longer than a few days, there is a concern that apple trees will bud out, birds and bugs might make an early arrival, bears could wake and lumber down to forage from bird feeders. It can also cause sap to run early. This happened in February; the temperatures spiked into the fifties, we weren’t even in mud Mucks yet. As I walked through the hardware store, I caught snippets of “sugaring talk.” Lots of head shaking and low voices from people holding unexpected purchases of taps and plastic tubing. Mumblings and grumblings about a ruined season. It is a well known fact that Vermonters cannot be content for too long; if the sun is shining, we haven’t had enough rain, if it snows, we’ll most likely never see sun again and if the sap runs too early, season’s ruined! This never actually stops anyone from rushing around, checking their holding tanks and lighting a fire for boiling.
As expected, we got another foot of snow shortly thereafter rescuing the season. We love our seasons. There is mud season, black fly season, (yes, there is a black fly festival) hay season, foliage season, hunting season, stick season, and sugarin’ season. There are large, small and backyard sugaring operations. In the month of March, I watch our email for an invite to a sugar-on-snow party. As I write this I’m unsure as to its appeal because we are talking about eating a lump of snow! However, if you take that snow, put it into a red and white french fry container, pour warm syrup over it, serve a raised doughnut and pickle on the side: heaven. Everyone sits on stumps and hacks away at the snow with a plastic fork. You haven’t done a proper job if you have more than one tine left on the fork at the end of the afternoon.
Our friend Dan emails daily updates on his sugaring. They aren’t conversational just informative: “Boiling 12:00 to whenever the fire goes out.” At least once a season we head over to his sugar house perched on a knoll in his backyard. They live in a residential neighborhood not far from the capitol in a lovely big old Victorian house on a single lot. Tucked up into the corner of that lot Dan built his sugar house and come March, you can always see vapor clouds coming out of its roof. We rap on the wood door and he opens it, smiling. He is smiling because he is glad to see us but also because we always bring beer and snacks. It is bad form to arrive empty handed at a sugar house. Traditional music plays from something perched in the window and everything is steaming. No heat needed in a sugar house. Once in a while it is someone’s job to toss wood onto the fire that must be kept going until the tank has been emptied. He stirs the boiling liquid with a big paddle and we all lean in for a sniff. Paper cups are stacked on the shiny silver side of the evaporator and we are allowed to dip them in for a drink. So sweet that our teeth ache, a good and familiar ache. At the end of the season we buy a gallon of the darkest syrup he makes, grade C if possible. All of the best flavor lies in the dark, the only people who use Grade A fancy are flatlanders. We buy it to support them: we know that each Christmas Dan and Carolyn will give us a glass jar of their syrup festooned with a red ribbon and a large bag of homemade granola made from that syrup. I put sparse amounts of that granola on my yogurt so as to keep it as long as possible.
I’ve always wanted to add sugaring to the farm. However, unless you have a sugar house, you need to boil your sap down outside on an open fire or on your kitchen stove. There are wonderful stories of maple steam literally peeling wallpaper from people’s walls. Josh’s new home has a sugar house just down the road that he has been given permission to use. Next season we’ll join the gang at the hardware store, buckets and taps in our hands, grumbling about something.