The Saps of Spring, 2016 Edition

March is a difficult month.  It promises spring, but often belongs equally, if not more so, to winter.  It makes you think of gardening, of growing things, but at our latitude all you can really do is pile potting mix into little pots, get the seeds of the earliest, cool season plants going—onions, leeks, lettuce, some herbs.   There are days of warm sun that tempt you to get out and till a plot, but when you turn one clump of frigid, sodden soil, you turn quickly to plan B.  Never mind, there’s always that minefield of winter-weathered dog treasures to clear, a perennial March activity that more or less sums up the spirit of the season….

Maybe this is why a lot of my March days since moving to the country have been spent drilling little holes in trees, gathering the cold, slightly sweet water that weeps out, and cooking it down to incomparable sweetness—tree syrups, both maple and birch, and even a bit of black walnut.  It’s nature’s little consolation prize for enduring these purgatorial weeks, equal parts reward and distraction.  Though sap season comes around every year, it’s always a little bit different.  And this year has been more different than most.

People on Twitter tend to get a little excited, you may have noticed if you frequent that world.  I think it’s the ability to communicate instantaneously with friends, acquaintances, and strangers alike, all across the planet, that tends to heighten reactions exponentially.  This year I saw a slew of ecstatic tweets proclaiming that the weather for the week ahead looked perfect for maple sugaring…in the middle of February.  But the trees weren’t looking at the daily highs and lows to decide how to proceed; no, the trees were still frozen solid.

I forget exactly which March Surprise this was; we had a few....

But it did transpire that warmish weather continued—there were days with record highs, with record high lows—and I did wind up tapping a few maples, as well as the big box elder (a type of maple) in our yard, and our one majestic black walnut tree, on February 21, because what the heck.  And within a few days I did have a little sap, emphasis on the little.  The trees ran sluggishly for about a day, then the weather turned seasonably cold again.  Six trees gave me about one gallon of sap, which didn’t take too long to simmer down on the wood stove into a half cup of syrup; and so began the season of passive, micro-batch syruping, which continues to this day, as I reduce another five gallons of birch sap on the woodstove and then on the range top.  I’m not going to wind up with a vast reserve of syrup, but then, I don’t really need one.  The birch, especially, is sparingly deployed, maybe a tablespoon or so at a time, in salad dressings and marinades, mainly for grilled pork.
 

Birch syrup on the final reduction.

With small amounts of sap—5 to 8 gallons at a time—I didn’t bother firing up the labor-and-smoke-intensive half-assed sap contraption I’ve used in years past.  Instead, since we’re still stoking the woodstove every day, at least in the mornings and evenings, I’ve been setting a hotel pan and our Big Blue Le Creuset dutch oven on the stove and letting the sap slowly reduce to a manageable amount, at which point I boil the dickens out of it on our kitchen range top.  You may wonder, Isn’t that a lot of humidity to be adding to your indoor environment?  Aren’t you producing great clouds of water vapor, steaming the wallpaper off the walls, and covering everything with a sticky film? 

Legitimate concerns, to which the answers are: yes, I guess it’s a fair amount of humidity, but things are generally dry this time of year, so we haven’t noticed any issues; and as we have no wallpaper on our walls, none to steam off!  Finally, no, our walls and ceiling bear no resemblance to a movie theater floor after being deluged with Mountain Dew during the kiddie matinee.  The whole idea, see, is that the sugary part remains in the pot as the water evaporates.  Even if some of the sugar escaped a furiously boiling pot, I don’t think it would go very far, the sugar molecules presumably being a good deal heavier than water vapor. 

The long and short of it is this:  I think it’s a myth, one which I myself may have helped to promulgate in the past, that cooking sap down inside has these undesirable side effects.  When I’m doing the fast, final boiling, I’ve got the vent hood running, a couple of windows cracked, and there’s no noticeable change in our indoor weather.  Also, I’ve kept checking the walls near the stove, the inside of the vent hood, for that legendary sticky film—none to be found.  Now, if I had a hundred, or even 40, 20 gallons to deal with at a time, I probably wouldn’t do it inside.  But with these small batches, it works fine.  It’s also really nice to get double duty out of the woodstove, heat for the home on chilly days, tasty syrups for the kitchen.

The Puddock hard at work, multi-tasking.

It has taken me a while, years, in fact, to start to feel comfortable using the birch syrup.  It’s completely unlike anything else I have in my pantry, so it didn’t slide easily into any particular niche.  People ask me what it’s like, and I can only give vague analogies or general descriptions that don’t capture the essence of the thing.  It’s dark, dark as molasses, and it has some molasses qualities, but it’s not thick—in its body, its “mouth feel,” it’s lighter and thinner than maple syrup.  And banish any thought that it’s like maple syrup just because it’s sugar that comes from a tree.  While maple syrup is composed of sucrose, like plain old granulated sugar, birch syrup is glucose and fructose (I think I’ve got that right).  The flavor of birch syrup is much…edgier.  There’s acidity to it, and often a little intriguing bitterness.  It’s very aromatic, with sweet, menthol, spicy, root beer type notes.  Really, if you’re interested in distinctive foods, particularly distinctive northern foods, you’ve got to try it.

If you have access to a few birch trees, it’s easy enough to get, as long as, you know, nature cooperates.  You tap the trees exactly as you would for maple syrup, drill a little hole about 1 ½” deep, insert a tap, hang a bag, bucket, what have you, or attached food grade tubing to allow the sap to run into a container.  Then when you have a quantity, you cook it down.  And cook it down.  And cook it down….  Because, the thing about birch sap:  it’s generally less than half as concentrated in sugars as maple sap.  So if it typically takes from 30 to 40 gallons of maple sap to produce a gallon of syrup, with birch we’re talking about a roughly 80:1 ration.  Breaking that down into the smaller batches I’ve been doing, 10 gallons of sap gave me one scant pint of syrup.  

Syrup assortment: the small, very light one at center front is black walnut.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again:  you can look at the numbers, even the relatively reasonable maple ratios, and think you get it, but until you actually do it, you can’t possibly understand.  Still, it’s worth it.  I go to a lot of trouble, tapping the trees, hauling the heavy sap down the hill (luckily I do get to haul it down the hill), cooking the sap down and down and down, but at the end I’ve got lovely local products to work with through the rest of the year.

And here’s a handy fact of nature:  the birch trees tend to start running as the maple run is coming to an end.  So if you have access to both kinds of trees, you can move your tapping equipment over to the birches when you’ve had your fill of maple sugaring, and the trees start to break bud, rendering the sap bitter and unusable.  Making syrup, especially birch syrup, is a labor of love, and a rite of the season, a perennial celebration of those immemorial cycles.  A lot of work and time, sure, but hey, it beats picking up dog crap….

Earlier reports from sap season:
 Sapped Out, 2013
The Sweetest Tree, 2013
Sweet Trees X3, 2015
Sweetness, Toil, and Smoke, 2010

How I have used birch syrup:

·        *  As a marinade for grilled or smoked meat:  it’s great brushed on a pork chop, which I then season simply with salt and pepper.  For some reason, the birch syrup doesn’t burn on the grill the way maple syrup or honey would.  Perhaps because the sugar composition is different.  I’ve also used it on grilled game birds, particularly woodcock.  And I’ve used it in the cure for smoked duck breast and venison with wonderful results.

Grilled red wattle pork chops in a birch syrup marinade; pork and birch have a delicious affinity.

*  In salad dressings:  just a teaspoon or two in a vinaigrette really makes its presence felt, and brings that distinctive, aromatic birch flavor to any kind of salad.

·         *  In cocktails:  1 teaspoon birch syrup, a few drops of lemon juice, 2 ounces Scotch, bourbon, or rye, stir it up, add ice, garnish with a lemon twist.  Or for the lemon substitute blood oranges in season for a cocktail I’ve dubbed “The Nasty Bruise.”  For a refreshing non-alcoholic drink, stir a couple teaspoons of birch syrup into sparkling water, add ice and perhaps a squeeze of lemon juice.

Those are the main applications I’ve found for birch syrup.  I’m having a decent year with the birch this spring, so I’ll have a good supply to experiment with through the year.  I repeat:  a little goes a long way with birch syrup.

Birch-Mustard Seed Carrot Salad

Two servings.  

1 large or 2 small carrots

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons yellow mustard seeds

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon birch syrup

1 small garlic clove sliced very thin

A bit of chiffonade leek or scallion green, optional

Salt and pepper

Peel the carrots and slice them very thin—1/8” or less.   A Benriner mandoline is handy for this—watch your fingers!

Heat the oil over medium low and add the mustard seeds.  Stir them around until they just start to pop, then remove from the heat.  Add the lemon juice, birch syrup, and garlic and stir well.  Pour the dressing over the carrots, add a couple good pinches of salt and a few grinds of pepper, and stir well.  Let the salad sit for at least a half hour or up to several hours before serving.  Sprinkle the optional leek or scallion greens over top just before serving.

Maple syrup variation:  in place of the birch syrup, use 2 teaspoons of maple syrup and ½ teaspoon of Dijon mustard--I haven't actually tried this variation, but I don't see how it could be bad.

Here’s a brief record of weather, phenology, and such since syrup season began at the end of February:

Feb 27 record highs

Feb 29 1^st ½ cup maple syrup done

March 1, “brittle and chill” and the trees aren’t producing sap

March 4, 3 inches of snow

March 8 red-winged blackbirds back & a scant half cup of black walnut syrup finished from 56 ounces sap—that’s all for black walnut, it didn’t produce enough sap after that to bother with

3/10 snow’s all gone and Mary notes, looking out the kitchen window, “It’s not winter anymore,” to which I reply, “It’s not spring, either.  It’s mud season.”

3/10 cooked down a tiny bit of box elder syrup, “single source”….

Shrimp on the barbie, definite grilling weather

3/11 picked garlic mustard along the Rush River at Brush Cr Rd; grilled pork chops; summery

3/12 summery; dinner at Tina’s, I wear shorts

3/16? 2” rain, thunder

3/14 woodcock return

3/17 SNOW again, grass covered

3/18 snow gone

3/22 tapped birches and they were running; seemed pretty vigorous, but didn’t get much for a few days

3/23 SNOW again! 3-4”.

3/24 snow gone!

3/27 finished the last maple, moved over to birch

3/28 5 gallons birch mostly cooked down

3/29 another 5 gallons birch gathered, mostly cooked down; sunny and warm, in shorts again

3/30 It didn’t seem that there was much sap flow, but the eight birch gave around four gallons total, which reduced gently on the woodstove overnight

3/31 The house is starting to smell birchy with the sap on the woodstove getting right down there.  It’s raining now, but the forecast is for an inch of snow by the end of the day.  April Fool!

Text and photos copyright 2016 by Brett Laidlaw

Sweet Trees X3

Boiling birch on the left, maple on the right.

Sugaring season came to an end this week.  The birches were running pretty good for a few days, but with afternoons in the sunny 60s the sap doesn’t keep.  The maples slowed and then dried up a good week ago, and are now breaking bud.  I also tapped our one big black walnut this year, but not soon enough to get much sap—enough to cook down to maybe a third of a cup, which isn’t bad, considering I only had about a half gallon of sap.  My minimal experience with black walnut tells me that the sap is at least as concentrated in sugar as maple, and that it probably starts running at about the same time.  Since our black walnut tree is always extremely late to leaf out, I had assumed the sap would run late, too.  Not so.

I took a very low-key approach to sugaring this year.  I tapped about five maples, exactly two birches, and the one black walnut.  I left my half-assed sap contraption in mothballs, and just reduced the sap on our woodstove, very gradually, and did the final brief boiling on our gas cooktop.  The result was not any great quantity of anything, but the process did produce some observations.

Shades of maple: from left, first to fourth boilings of 2015 syrup, and one from 2014 at right.

The maple syrup was the lightest in color that I’ve ever made.  Even the fourth and final batch, from sap gathered just before the trees dried up, is medium amber at most—the last syrup is usually very dark, verging on what sometimes is sold as “grade B”.  So there’s less of a caramel taste to the maple, but it’s delicious just the same.

Slow birch 2015.

The “slow birch” also made a much lighter, more delicate syrup than hard-boiled versions I’ve done in the past.  It's a gorgeous color, reddish mahogany. There’s still an edge of acidity to it, but it’s rounder, without the aggressive, almost bitter bite of the darker stuff.  I suppose you could liken it to different roasts of the same coffee bean, from light to Vienna, French, espresso.  Actually, I think you could very much liken it to that.  I could see using the lighter stuff to drizzle over grilled or roasted vegetables, where the darker version works better combined with other ingredients, in vinaigrettes, marinades, or glazes.

Hard-boiled 2014 birch.

Finally, the walnut.  As I say, I wound up with about half a cup.  It’s much more like maple syrup than birch, which makes sense—maple and walnut trees are more closely related to each other than they are to birches, aspens, etc.  Also, I believe, though I don’t know for sure, that walnut syrup is composed of sucrose, as is maple syrup, while birch syrup contains mainly fructose and glucose.  I’m just going from taste, and common sense(?) on that.

Black walnut syrup.

The main thing I was aware of with the walnut syrup was trying NOT to describe its aroma or flavor as “nutty.”  I resisted that characterization mightily, and in the end, I failed.  The finished product definitely has a slight, but undeniable, aroma of toasted nuts to it, and a maple-level sweetness.  

There you go.  That’s the sugaring report.  I think all three kinds of syrup are worth making if you have access to a few trees.  And as with my previous explorations of micro-batch pickling and preserve making, I hope I’ve shown that you can have fun with DIY foods without going overboard into tedious mass production.  Sometimes a taste is enough.

Birch in the final reduction.

Next time it’s on to the nettles and other wild greens.  ‘Tis the season.  And it’s been mild enough of late that I think I’ll hit the garden today and plant some radishes, mache, lettuce, and peas.

The Bide-A-While tree syrups family portrait, 2015.

The Sweetest Tree

It has snowed here nearly every day for the last week, interspersed with rain, freezing rain, and sleet, and the frigid precipitation has been accompanied at times by gale-force winds. We had a break from all that yesterday, a pleasant, sunny day when the temperature tiptoed into the 40s. The sun was strong—I got a bit of color on my winter-pale face, I noticed as I brushed my teeth last night—and our yard turned to slush by mid-afternoon.

But all good things must come to an end, they say, and that warm, bright idyll will seem as a dream today when snow and rain and snow again return, and the streams may flood and windchill makes it feel like February. Well, what the freakin’ ever…. Last spring, March in particular, was freakishly warm, so I guess this is just how we come by our historical average temperatures, or it’s evidence of global weather weirding, or something. There is not much we can do but piss and moan, and pretty much everyone I know has been doing plenty of that.

It’s true, this endless winter of a springtime is not good for much, but in attempting to look on the bright side, here are a few pluses amid all the grimness: We haven’t seen any ticks yet, where in a mild winter we sometimes encounter them in the midst of a February thaw. Likewise, no sign of mosquitoes. Small blessings, perhaps, but we must take what we can get.

Also, once the fruit trees bloom, they probably won’t be hit as bad by late frost as they were last year, when all our fruit—from apples to wild black cherry, nannyberries and hawthorn—took a hit. Only the blackberries produced a decent crop.

And then, with springtime so drastically deferred, once it does warm up we’ll likely see an amazing confluence of blooms as everything bursts into flower at once, to catch up with the season. That’s something to look forward to.

Finally, this reluctant spring has been ideal for a seasonal rite cherished across our part of the northland: maple sugaring. With freezing nights and daytime temperatures creeping at least a little bit above 32, the sap has been flowing for the last couple of weeks, and has really picked up in the last few days. Last year, the sudden March heat put an end to the sugaring season pretty much before it started. This year is looking like a banner year; I have ten trees tapped, and nearly two gallons of finished syrup made, the most I’ve ever done in three years of sugaring. I’ll probably stop collecting sap in a couple of days, cook down what I have stored, and look forward to many happy pancake breakfasts ahead. Then maybe I’ll tap a couple birch trees, to diversify our stock of sweeteners.

Collecting the sap and boiling it down has been easier (and thus, much more enjoyable) this year for a number of reasons: one, living here full-time makes it much easier to keep on top of the process, since I can manage things a little bit at a time. Also, whereas collecting sap at Bide-A-Wee meant hauling heavy containers quite a distance over bumpy terrain, and mostly uphill, the trees I’ve tapped here are just a couple hundred yards up the hill from the house. I pour the sap into five- to seven-gallon containers, put those in our beat-up but still serviceable black plastic sled, and it’s an easy cruise downhill to the house.

 Boiling down the sap was problematic in the past, as well. My method this year is not terribly sophisticated, but it’s a step up from previous years and shows a good deal of Yankee ingenuity, if I say so myself. What I did was, I took an old oil-burning heater that had been dumped in our woods, and I disemboweled it so I was left with a big metal box, about the size of a dehumidifier, open on one long and one short side, the other short side covered with venting slits. I bought a hotel pan, like the ones you see on buffet lines, to be my evaporating pan. To make it fit, I attached some strips of metal roofing material (left over from the garage we had built last year) to the sides of the larger opening. I placed a grate from our portable fire pit in the bottom, to elevate the wood a bit and provide good air circulation—it fit perfectly. Set this half-assed sap contraption up on cinder blocks, and I was ready to go.

The important feature of this contrivance, something I noticed looking at boilers built specifically for syrup making, is that the evaporating pan fits right down in the fire box. This way you’re getting heat not just on the bottom, but on the four sides, as well. It’s sort of the surround-sound concept applied to syrup making.

My boiler is not that efficient, and could be improved, I’m sure (for instance, I could line it with fire brick to retain more heat), but I’m a small-timer at this, and plan to remain so. I’ll make what small adjustments occur to me over time, but mostly I just hope my salvage operation of a boiler lasts me a couple of years. I know now that you can cobble something together from mostly found materials that really works quite well. I don’t cook the syrup all the way down in the boiler. I take the sap down to maybe one-tenth its original volume, bring it inside and strain it through a scrap of old dish towel into my 5-quart Le Creuset pot (aka “Big Blue”). That sits on the woodstove, and the sap reduces gently until it’s almost syrup. A final, closely supervised boiling, either on the woodstove or the electric range, finishes the syrup off. To determine when it’s done, I just go by feel and taste—I’ll dip in a spoon, pull it out and let it cool for a few moments, and taste. When it was the flavor and viscosity of syrup, well, I figure that’s syrup. I usually let it bubble for around five more minutes, then take it off the heat and bottle it.

If you’re interested in making maple syrup yourself, there’s still time, if you’re above 45-degrees north latitude, and you have access to some trees. Virtually any kind of maple, even box elders, can be tapped for sap. There are various on-line tutorials to show you how to get started, but a wonderful resource for maple fanciers has just been published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, the second title in the Northern Plate series (the first was Kim Ode’s Rhubarb Renaissance, which made a tart-sweet splash last spring).

The new title is by my friend Teresa Marrone, and it’s called Modern Maple. In it Teresa has compiled around 75 maple-inspired recipes, along with a brief history of maple syrup, and step-by-step instructions for DIY-ers. I know her method is sound because she’s the one who got me started, in 2009. I made a visit to her house in south Minneapolis where she had a couple of big silver maples tapped in her yard. Since then I’ve purchased a few commercially-made metal spiles, and those clever blue bag hanger devices for collecting the sap, but I started out with PVC tubing and repurposed plastic pickle buckets from the burger joint in our former Saint Paul neighborhood. (Here are my maple posts from 2009 and 2010; seems maybe we didn’t do any tapping in 2011, as I was feverishly working on finishing the book that spring, and then 2012, as mentioned, was a bust because of the weather.)

The recipes in Modern Maple beautifully illustrate the versatility of maple syrup in the kitchen. While the flavor of maple is beloved by many, I still think it’s underrated as an ingredient. Teresa’s book should help to correct that situation. Many of the recipes highlight maple’s unique sweetness, but there are also many great examples of how well it works in counterpoint with other flavors like vinegar and citrus, chile heat, and various spices, including a favorite of mine, Sichuan pepper (although I am mildly dismayed to see the outdated Szechuan used in Teresa’s book; unfortunately, many style books haven’t caught up with the times).

I like the sound of her Sweet and Spicy Chile-Maple Dipping Sauce, and I may have to make a batch of her Near-Beer Peanuts tonight for a happy hour snack. Other tasty sounding dishes that caught my eye: Red Cabbage and Berry Salad and Escarole and Radish Salad with Smoky Maple Dressing; Corn on the Cob with Spiced Maple Glaze; Pork Tenderloin with Rhubarb-Maple Sauce and Cheese Grits (though I’d probably use a humbler, tastier cut of pork, like cutlets from the shoulder, or country-style ribs); and Shortbread with Maple Caramel and Sea Salt.

Teresa recently started a blog, which will certainly be worth reading. All the recent interest in wild foods has been great in highlighting the qualities of these most local of foods, and Teresa’s involvement in the topic goes back way before foraging became trendy; she’s the real deal, indeed.

With all this sap boiling down around here, I’ve been using a lot of it in my cooking. When I’m making bread I’ll add a ladle of not-quite-syrup to the dough, to the obvious delight of the yeast in my starter. The other night I came up with a dandy topping for broiled fish, combining fresh bread crumbs from a flavorful sourdough loaf with butter (warm these together so the butter is integrated), toasted sesame seeds, ground roasted Sichuan pepper, and a moistening of maple syrup (I think there was something spicy in there, too, perhaps a couple of pinches of espelette or similar fragrant, not too hot chile).  Pat this mixture liberally on a skinless fish fillet--I used Lake Superior herring--get an oven-proof fry pan hot, and fire up the broiler, too.  Add a little oil to the pan and gently slide or lift the fish into the pan.  Then move it directly to the broiler, five or six inches away, and broil until the topping is nicely browned.  The syrup in the mixture sort of welds everything together into a crunchy caramelized crust, and the direct heat of the broiler really brings out the fragrance of the Sichuan pepper.

I get sort of fanatical about not wasting even a drop of syrup—I’m all too aware of the time and effort required to make it—and this has led me to some delightful treats. A couple of days ago I found a bit of tea left in the pot, and a recently emptied, not yet washed pan from reducing syrup. I deglazed that maple pot with the tea, added a generous portion of whole milk from a local farm, and warmed the mixture on the woodstove: Maple milk tea, the woodcutter’s delight.

I wouldn’t turn my nose up at any kind of maple syrup, and in the past couple of years most of what we’ve used has been purchased. The homemade stuff, though, that’s a different thing entirely. When the sap is reduced over a wood fire, it does pick up a hint of smokiness, which you don’t tend to find in the commercial syrup. And then, your own syrup expresses the terroir from which it sprung—no other syrup will taste quite the same. Also, you get to see how the syrup changes through the season, generally going from a lighter, more refined tasting syrup early in the run, when the sugar concentrations are highest, to darker syrup with more robust flavors as sugaring nears its end, and the sap requires longer boiling times.

It is, indeed, a hell of a lot of work, for what can sometimes seem meager results. And you simply must do it yourself to have any comprehension of what’s required to turn something between 30 to 40 gallons of sap into a gallon of syrup. But however much syrup you wind up with, it’s gold, it’s magic, it’s something more than food and more than sweetness. It’s the taste of the northern forest, distilled into amber genius.

Text and photos copyright 2013 by Brett Laidlaw

Sweetness, Toil, and Smoke

The sugaring season, days of sweetness, toil, and smoke. It's great when it starts, maybe better when it's over. Coming to the end of our second season now, I realize it's a bit of a compulsion. Partway through I wind up asking myself, is this really worth it? The hauling, by hand, of heavy jugs of sap from the north end of our property, where the maples are, to the south end, where sits Bide-A-Wee; the cutting, hauling, splitting of wood; the expense of all that wood, and the tending of the fire, and the smoke in your face, day after day, and what do you get in the end, a gallon or two of syrup?

But if you're someone who's just a little fanatical about getting his food as close to the source as possible, and more than that, making the most of local treasures, well, how could you pass this up?

Concentration, distillation, that's what's at the heart of it. The thing that is fascinating and compelling about it is exactly what is also, at the end, somewhat disheartening--you start off with this vast amount of clear liquid, cook it for hours, and hours, and hours, watch it gradually take on color, sweeten, go from barely sweet water to a viscous, fragrant, indescribably sweet, and, to me, incomparably delicious nectar. How great and amazing is that? And at the same time, you go through...all that, as above, to wind up with...a little sticky sweet stuff, that now fits into a few pint jars? How depressing is that?

But it's deceptive. A little maple syrup, of course, goes a long way. And has magical properties. A couple of teaspoons in a vinaigrette makes a dressing that has people going back again and again to the salad bowl, though they couldn't say why. A glaze on a pork belly, or a duck breast, then exposed to applewood smoke and gentle heat for a few hours makes the best cured meat in the world.



And it's not bad on pancakes, or french toast. Or in a cocktail. So, you know, I guess it's worth it.

We haven't come up with the perfect evaporation system, but I'm pretty pleased with this sort of Snuffy Smith-looking moonshiner's contraption, bunged together of cinder blocks and pieces of metal "repurposed" from some dismantled piece of farm equipment we found in the North Woods near the maples. I'm going to keep it, refine it, for a summer cookstove, add a grilling station adjacent.

And now, speaking of concentration, here's what you start with. These three containers of five, six, and seven gallons.

And then two more, given scale here by 60-pound, four-year-old griffon Lily. (Isn't she cute? She's turned out to be just a beautiful dog, and sweet as can be, a maniac out on the land, rarely stopping unless we make her lie down, all day long; the only problem is she's unconscionably moist, and cannot control The Terrible Tongue. But I digress.)

That's, let's see, close to 30 gallons of sap. Imagine your refrigerator filled with 30 one-gallon jugs of milk. Imagine then reducing that over heat until you have less than one gallon, about three quarts. Or, as we see here, five gallons sap, one pint syrup.

Dinner one night at the cabin was slices of that just-smoked pork and duck, some plain steamed jasmine rice, and sweet-and-sour chard made with our syrup and apple cider vinegar. The chard dish was a keeper. Recipe to follow.

The Saps of Springtime

You'd have to be a sap to believe that we're done with winter just because it's spring according to the calendar. This was the view from Bide-A-Wee on the first official day of spring, 2009. And it looked like this the next morning:


But by mid-morning the fog had burned off, and the snow was all gone by afternoon. As evening came on we were standing around in T-shirts watching maple sap boil down over a wood fire. Winter, spring, and a taste of summer, all in 24 hours or less! Theater of the seasons, you betcha!


Let's skip the traditional seasonal designations, and just say: It's sugaring time. In the woods on our Wisconsin land the birch, aspens, and oaks predominate, but we have a few nice-sized maples, and we were eager to have a first try at tapping them. Here below, our "sugar bush." You can see the sophisicated gathering equipment--pickle buckets from our local burger joint, various jugs that were cluttering up the basement, camping water containers, pots and pans.


We were fortunate to have recently made the acquaintance of Teresa Marrone and her husband Bruce Bohnenstingl. Teresa is the author of Abundantly Wild (which I wrote about earlier this year ) and several other books. She didn't literally write the book on home maple sugaring, but she did write the article, in the recent Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine of the Minnesota DNR (that article is written for kids; just my speed!). Bruce and Teresa tap two trees in the front yard of their south Minneapolis home, and get enough sap to boil down for a few pints of syrup in a good year. They showed us the basics, which are pretty...basic. Drill a whole in a big enough tree, smack a spigot in, hang a bucket.

The only really tricky part is boiling the sap down to syrup. It takes around 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. That's a lot of water to dispose of; you don't want to do it in your kitchen, unless you like the idea of life in a sauna. A wood fire is traditional; a good-sized propane burner is more efficient, and results in less ash in the syrup.


It hasn't been great sugaring weather so far this year, at least not in our little corner of Wisconsin. It was cold through the middle of March, and then when it warmed up, it got too warm, often not dropping below freezing at night--the cycle of cold nights and warm days is what really gets the sap flowing. So far we've managed to gather enough sap for exactly one-and-a-half pints.

Hey, look, we made maple syrup! We are very, very pleased with ourselves.

It is also possible to make syrup from birch sap, and we're looking forward to trying that, as well. Birch sap is not nearly as sweet as maple, so it requires a lot more boiling down. It's also a completely different type of sugar from that produced by maples: maple sugar is sucrose, exactly the same as table sugar; birch syrup is mainly fructose. I was really surprised to learn that. Anyone know the reason these two trees produce completely different kinds of sugar? This is not a rhetorical question, or a quiz--if anyone out there knows the reason for the difference, I'd love to hear.

There are other ways to take advantage of maple sap without all the rigmarole of reducing it to syrup. This New York Times article describes the rituals of maple-tapping time in South Korea. These guys drink sap by the gallon, and having tried it myself, I can understand why--sap straight from the tree is cold and clear as tap water, slightly sweet, a touch woody, extremely refreshing.

Look for maple-inspired recipes here in the weeks to come.


Text and photos copyright 2009 by Brett Laidlaw