Yesterday we had a grand adventure – our friends took us out to their sugar bush. Here, in a hidden valley, the old maple trees are tapped so that their sap drains into a bucket, and the sap is boiled down into that most luscious of all potions – maple syrup.

First we walked among the maples and helped gather up some of the old plastic tubing they once used to collect sap. Many syrup producers use such tubing, but it’s said to affect the flavor of the syrup, and requires a lot of maintenance when deer run through it or squirrels chew holes.

              

              Buckets collect the dripping sap.

Our friends decided to go back to the old-fashioned way of collecting in buckets and hauling by hand. It’s a lot of work hauling buckets up and down hills, but nothing could be more fun! Sometimes the sap freezes, and if you’re not careful when you’re dumping, there can be accidents when the ice ‘plug’ suddenly comes loose.

After gathering sap, the whole crew sat down to a lunch of summer sausage, oranges, and port-wine cheese ball on crackers.

While we ate, the wood-fired syrup boiler was hard at work, letting off a sweet-smelling steam that mixed with the scent of wood-smoke.

And after lunch, the syrup was ready!  As connoisseurs of maple syrup, we can wholeheartedly say that this was by far the best we've ever tasted.

The remarkable thing about maple syrup is that it's one of the only ‘wild foods’ that people eat regularly. There are so many delicious natural foods that are mostly ignored by people – it’s fun to know that people are getting a ‘taste of the wild’ when they eat their morning pancakes!

 

Back to the Journal