Maple Sugaring. David K. Leff

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СКАЧАТЬ whereby the sap is pushed through a membrane that allows water to pass but not larger sugar molecules.

      In dawn’s dim gloaming, or after a long day at work, I’d lift the overhead door of what looked like an ordinary garage. Flicking on a bare incandescent bulb revealed the enchanted space of the sugarhouse. There among buckets and various other containers, tangled hoses, a splitting maul, and the other tackle of small-time sugar making, I’d kneel before the cast-iron doors of the firebox, called an arch, light a nest of paper and kindling, and watch the flames begin to dance. Soon I could feel uneven warmth on my face. Along the wall, the blaze cast shadows on the lawn mower, garden tools, and children’s bicycles that seemed to have been hibernating since fall. This plain space for the equipage of suburban life seemed momentarily transformed to a wizard’s lair of alchemy where what looked like water would soon be transformed, if not into wine, at least into a kind of liquid gold. Expanding with the heat, the stainless-steel pan startled me with irregular pings. I slammed the cast-iron doors and got busy.

      I opened valves on the white PVC sap line that ran from the outside storage tank through the wall and across the sugarhouse to a rectangular galvanized container, like a loaf pan, resting on top of the back of the evaporator, where rising steam would warm the fresh sap before it dripped through yet another valve into the boil below. I made sure there was enough sap in the back of the evaporator pan where the stainless was formed into corrugated channels, called flues, giving the fire more surface area so the clear liquid would boil faster. The front pan, where denser, more sugary pre-syrup flowed, was flat so it would boil more slowly, since sugary liquids can quickly caramelize and burn, destroying not only the syrup, but often the pan. I adjusted the valve that regulated flow from the back to the front pan and stepped outside to split a few chunks of wood.

      Pin-prick bubbles formed in the pan, and I heard slight rumbles as the vaguest wisps of steam began to rise like mist off a chilling pond in autumn. Opening the firebox, I tossed in a couple more pieces of wood and listened to a low roar like dragon breath as the hungry flames sucked in oxygen. Jerkily moving like a butterfly from flower to flower, I played with the valves, prepared the next charge of wood for the fire, tested the more viscous liquid with a scoop to estimate its density, and readied cone-shaped felt filters suspended over a bucket for my first draw-off of nearly finished product. Thumbprint swirls of heat in the pan soon turned to churning bubbles and then to large cauliflower-like upheavals. Steam hung in the sugarhouse like fog before rising out a skylight in cumulous puffs. It was a day of clear sky and high pressure when the sap seemed eager to boil and time moved quickly.

      • • • • • • •

      THE SWEET VAPOR of a boil is intoxicating. The muscle rhythm of stoking the fire, adjusting the flow of sap, and drawing off finished syrup is hypnotic. The smell, the moist warmth, and the sound of boiling and dripping produce a sugarmaker’s high—a kind of sensory joy forged in hard work and the pleasure of making something natural and nourishing.

      Rising steam is also a welcome-mat for company. While a sugarmaker is always puttering around his evaporator, once a steady boil has begun there is plenty of time. In fact, boiling sap can be said to be made of time—minutes, hours, sometimes days. It’s not just time for processing a food—it’s time for visitors who work in offices and retail shops or whose jobs are focused on computers or carpentry to share in something attached to natural cycles and a deep heritage whose simplicity never fails to intrigue. They become part of something elemental and feel good about it. Describing his sugarhouse as second only to a general store as a gathering place, Burr Morse calls it a “focal point for pointless jabber and sweet triviality.” Time in a sugarhouse speeds up with visitors, and slows almost painfully when you’re alone. Sugaring not only produces syrup—the time it takes also generates stories.

      Although a passerby once dialed 911 because he thought the steam was smoke and my garage aflame, the guys at the firehouse knew better, and a phone call to me kept the sirens silent. But since they were together anyway, they came by in a pumper to satisfy their sweet tooths with samples right off the evaporator. We swapped a few lies and had some laughs at the caller’s expense.

      Like the pulse of sap, the flow of visitors is unpredictable. They come in dribs and drabs and occasionally in a steady stream. Sometimes I could go for hours on a sunny weekend and not only run the evaporator without interruption, but get through the paper and several magazines that had been waiting months on my bedside table. Other times, I’d be startled from a late-night fugue by a friend I thought had hit the pillow hours ago. It was an ongoing open house requiring no invitation, and the number of guests was yet another measure of time.

      I liked it best when children came by and would stare moon-eyed into the steam as if they’d entered a fairy’s lair. Sometimes they would arrive with parents nervously working like sheepdogs to keep them from the hot arch or tripping on an errant bucket or hose. Older ones would bicycle over on warmer days. At the bank or the barber they might be treated to a lollipop or some candy around Halloween, but a paper thimble of near-syrup right off the evaporator was a wonder-working potion. Whenever there was fresh snow, they’d eagerly collect a bowlful and gasp as I’d drizzle hot syrup over it, creating maple taffy before their eyes. Often on weekend afternoons the sugarhouse would be filled with the screeching chirp and shout of children.

      “We’re drinking tree blood!” some third-grader would inevitably shout. Empathic kids, perhaps recalling a vaccination, sometimes asked if the drill hurt the trees. Older ones would eagerly help collect sap, though between spillage and a few drinks I’d have been better off without their labor. Nevertheless, their puppy-like enthusiasm was a bigger payday than I ever got from a gallon of syrup. Familiar with the process, my own kids and those of my neighbors would turn into mini tour guides, and I cringed to hear my own words and intonations echoed in their squeaky voices.

      Living two blocks up the hill, my buddy Alan was a frequent visitor to the sugarhouse, where, like Thoreau, I kept three chairs on sabbatical from the summer terrace—one for myself, a second for company, and a third for society. He’d see steam rising, come in without a knock, plop down in one of the plastic-webbed seats, and pick up the newspaper with little more than a taciturn “hello.” After he’d digested a few column inches, we’d be off discussing Middle East politics, the power company rate increase, or some nearby mayor charged with corruption. His blood churning with the news, he’d get up and stretch, lean over the evaporator and breathe the steam like a person with a cold savoring a vaporizer.

      At such times, my fire department friend Bill and his wife Teri might be passing by on one of their long walks, and we’d catch up about our kids or the latest fitting or hose lay on one of the trucks down at the firehouse. I’d be adjusting the flow of sap into the back pan or turning the draw-off valve and pouring syrup into a cone filter to remove niter, inert sand-like minerals that precipitate out of boiled sap. We’d chat while I moved about the machine, and the conversation might morph into a discussion of the town budget or an impending snowstorm.

      The sugarhouse had the natural conviviality and easy talk of a neighborhood tavern or coffee shop, where you never knew who’d pop in or where the conversation might lead. Sometimes an impromptu party might erupt when someone came by with a few beers or cups of coffee. Toward the end of the season, when the last, usually very dark syrup was for my own consumption, I’d sometimes boil hot dogs in the slightly sweet back pan while talk turned to the new baseball season.

      Some of the deepest conversations I’ve ever had occurred while I boiled into the wee hours when a friend or neighbor who tossed and turned with troubled sleep came by under the silence of stars. There were problems on their mind and no one to talk to past midnight unless they saw my light and rising steam. The visit might be generated by an argument with a spouse, fears about a teenager on drugs, or a sick parent barely clinging to reality and life. Perhaps it was the mesmerizing pulse of the boil or soothing sweetness of the steam, but personal details I’d never hear in daylight came spilling out. Maybe there was something insular and comforting СКАЧАТЬ