IN WHICH OUR INTREPID REPORTER VENTURES INTO THE SUGARING WOODS OF OVERLOOK, MASS
Words & Photos by Cale Nicholson When I was growing up, we rarely if ever ate pancakes at home. My mom was more inclined to cook up bacon, eggs, and biscuits with gravy—true Southern breakfast food that floppy flapjacks just can't compete with. If I happened to have pancakes at a friend's house, they were sure to be slathered in some kind of highly processed maple-flavored corn syrup. I was never too impressed with this stuff. Watery and drab, it soaked the food without adding any punch.
Real maple syrup, on the other hand, is all-natural and tastes amazingly sweet and delicate. It can only be harvested in New England and parts of Canada and only in the early spring, generally February and March. I got a chance to see the process up close last spring, leaving behind the beginnings of warm local Arkansas weather for the frigid sugaring woods of Massachusetts, where I worked at Overlook Farm in Rutland, one of three Learning and Livestock Centers that Heifer International—a non-profit global hunger organization based in Little Rock—has in the United States.
The native Iroquois call March the month of the Maple Moon. The sugaring season runs roughly from Valentine's Day through the end of March. Overlook is hardly bustling with activity at this time, as all of the animals and people are pretty much just going through the motions of staying warm and surviving (preferably under a roof as much as possible). But it's one of the busiest times of the year for Dave and Carolyn Lewellyn, two Overlook farmers, who are making their seed order and plans for the upcoming season, while simultaneously directing the sugaring at the farm. My role at Overlook was to make their lives a little less hectic by helping them facilitate the sap-collecting and boiling process.
I expect most people don't stop to think about where maple syrup comes from. It's actually a fairly simple process. In late February and March each year, when the days are just beginning to warm up and the nights are still below freezing, the maple trees begin to slowly thaw out from their winter hibernation. At this time, the sap begins to rush up and down the maple trees throughout New England. This is essentially like when we stretch after getting out of bed in the morning, as the trees are waking up after their winter sleep, so to speak. The first sap run is rich in nutrients and high in sugar as the trees are doing all they can to form buds and bloom out for the spring.
As I went out into the sugaring woods with Dave and Carolyn for the first time, it occurred to me that most of my childhood conceptions of New England involved Pilgrims freezing to death barefoot and dumbfounded in the same snow that I was now tromping through comfortably in insulated boots and thick canvas Carhartt overalls. We weren't worried about where our next meal would come from or if the Indians would show us how to put corn kernels in the ground. Instead, we were setting out to perform the Iroquois' and, later, native New Englanders' sacred, ritualistic task of tapping the trees.
We began the process by drilling small, one-inch-deep holes — one for every foot of the tree's diameter—on the quick-thawing south side of a Sugar Maple, hammering in fitted metal taps, and hanging buckets to collect the running sap. After the buckets filled up over the next day or two, we brought the sweet liquid up from the woods in order to boil the excess water out in our small wooden Sugar House. We also drilled holes and affixed plastic taps with yard of interconnected rubber tubing to collect sap into 50-gallon buckets at the bottom of the hills from trees that were growing on an incline.
It generally takes 40 gallons of maple sap to yield one gallon of maple syrup, so a batch can take up to a half a day to finish off. We brought the clear, watery liquid up to the Sugar House and poured it into a boxy stainless steel pan set atop a wood-fired arch. We built a fire and heated up the sap, so that the water would turn into steam and evaporate, leaving the denser sugars behind to congeal into maple syrup.
I was surprisingly affected when I had my first taste of real maple syrup at Overlook. Genuine, fresh maple syrup has a natural, almost smoky, true maple flavor that can never be replicated. It is unexpectedly gentle and I actually felt euphoric: a goofy, calming feeling came over me as the syrup slowly lollygagged its way down my throat, on the way to warm my stomach.
After doing some research, I was pleased to learn that this pure, simple liquid is nutritious as well. Maple syrup retains all of the nutrients and minerals found naturally in the maple sap that it's derived from, including calcium, potassium, magnesium, and iron, as well as a number of essential vitamins.
As the season wound down, so did my affinity for experiencing a real winter. Two months of endless snowfall and 19-degree weather began to wear on me, and after the sap quality began to peter out, I gladly high-tailed it back down south. Dave and Carolyn were kind enough to supply me with a couple armloads of eight-ounce containers of Overlook Farm syrup, which I distributed among family and friends upon my return to the Natural State. I did hold back a few pints for myself, of course. I am now an official maple syrup addict and freely use it in my tea in lieu of sugar or on my sausage at breakfast. I'm still not the biggest fan of pancakes, but with enough real New England syrup on top, I'll eat just about anything.
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