So whatever happened to the tin buckets catching the drips?
Put an urban kid in the northwoods and there you have it: complete ignorance about maple syrup technology.
It’s all about tubes now, connected to trees then to each other, looking like someone had spun a web of blue around the maple forest (get it right, Ocean, it’s called a sugar bush).
sugar bush
tapping
Inside, the hut smells like you want it to smell: logs burning in the first stove, the syrup picking up a deep amber tone, filling the space with a warm aroma of waffles for breakfast.
feeding the fire
finishing tank
The tubes are so much cleaner than the bucket thing. Animals, bugs, shreds of forest life all made their way into the buckets.
A walk through the forest down to the river, following logging trails and deer tracks, over moist leaves (there are mushrooms here in the summer; you’re Polish… you like mushrooms, no? I like mushrooms) makes you kind of wistful for a grandmother’s house at the end of the run. The type of grandmother who lives in rustic places and does nothing but bake and cook for you all day long. (I had a grandmother like that, back in Poland; I picked mushrooms for her and she’d swim them in butter and chop them into pierogi.)
eau something or other
April 22nd. The first market day for Madison. I don’t use maple syrup much, ever since everybody in Dane County is pretending to be on one diet or other and big breakfasts and brunches belong to the days of buckets dangling from trees. But I’ll stock up. For the future. Liquid gold from up north.
Hey, bring that syrup over to my place and I'll make you french toast on challah bread with strawberries and whipped cream . . . with a side of bacon.
ReplyDeleteAnd fresh squeezed OJ.
Just don't forget the syrup, OK?
One of my most embarrassing moments came during a flight to London. I was seated next to the nicest couple from Vermont and they told me all about how they tap their trees, make the syrup, etc. And I asked "What kind of trees do you use?"
ReplyDeleteYou can also tap box elders (which most people take for complete junk tree), although it's more dilute than sugar maple, but the syrup tastes great.
ReplyDeleteI've also found it helpful to use a hollowed out piece of sumac for the spigot. The pink lemonade flavor of the sumac stalk gives a little extra sugar to the sap.