He was a smooth-faced lad of twelve or so when he tapped his first trees. Rummaging through his Grampa’s somewhat derelict wood-working shop, he found buckets, spiles, a hand drill, and a hammer and loaded them onto a sled. He pulled his equipment through the snow to the ten or twelve maples that lined the road in front of the farm, and one by one, drilled through the bark into the wood. The circular knob of the drill swivelled in his palm as he cranked it ’round, creating that necessary hole. The maple looked down as she felt the pin prick through her skin. Her face softened fondly. With his wooden hammer, he tapped in the spiles just so, careful not to split the wood around the puncture. The galvanized bucket was hung on the j hook of the spile, and the lid was fastened on.
He stood and waited, watching the miniature cave opening of the spile.
Then the thrill as the first, glistening tiny bulge of moisture pulsed from the tap, slid down the spile, and dropped – plunk – into the pail. It was the beginning of a lifelong passion.
The cold nights of March with its subsequent warmer days worked their ancient wisdom, a wisdom discovered and shared by the Indigenous people of Canada. Soon the steady dripping of sap drops filled the buckets. What then? Buckets of sap need to boiled and boiled to evaporate the water content in order to produce maple syrup. That sap was lugged into the farmhouse kitchen and set to simmer on the four-burner, electric stove. It bubbled and bubbled and bubbled some more until he had his first cup of the sweet stuff.
All that cooking produced a lot of steam, and the time of range hoods had not yet come. When the edges of the fine print wallpaper on the kitchen walls began to lift and curl, his sap cooking days in the kitchen were brought to an abrupt halt. Looking for an alternative, he went back into his Grampa’s shop. Here the boy set up on the pot-bellied stove and carried on with sugaring off. That spot too was short lived. When the canes that Grampa crafted and bent to perfect Js began to unfurl into flattened Ls, he was asked to leave.
Out of options, a kindly neighbour told him to bring his sap to their sugar shack, and they would boil it for him. That neighbour with his sugar bush, horses and sleigh, and wood-fired evaporator became foundational in spurring on a love for maple in the lad. It was an experience that reached far into the future, leaving a pleasing patina on a long-lasting maple “hobby”.
Ten years or thereabouts later, and now a young man, he was again tapping trees but now in the sugar bush on the farm where his mother was born and raised, the farm where he now lived. His newly minted bride, herself pot-bellied with their first baby, drove the loader tractor through the dips and around the bends of the bush as he emptied the buckets into the tank on the loader. Not yet having the means and facility to cook the sap, it was hauled to a nearby maple producer and sold.
And so it was, in the beginning.
This was not a fizzling, flash-in-the-pan passion. A friend became a business partner, an evaporator was installed into an old timber driving shed on the farm, and bushes were rented to increase taps. Eventually a piggy back was added to the evaporator to facilitate the process. Then, tired of washing and rinsing felt filter cones, a filter press was installed. Some years later, a reverse osmosis unit was hooked up and utilized for the process. Most importantly, the next generation was curious, interested, and learning the art.
With years of growth and the frown of the insurance company, the board and timber driving shed no longer was considered safe and viable. And so, the long held dream of a new sugar shack was pursued and built. Having updated equipment and a space designed for all aspects of maple syrup production was pleasing and good. The hours remained long, but he loved it no less.
On a boil day recently, his mother and a few of her friends came to look and see. Octogenarians all, their interest and curiosity was palpable. They fell to reminiscing as they sat in the comfort of the sugar shack office dipping old-fashioned donuts into fresh-made syrup and recalling their girlhood experiences around sap season – teams of horses, large wooden tanks, long pans on open fires, dollops of butter for defoamer. Old things that have been made new.
Sap now courses through sap lines, vacuum pumps aid their journey, and extractors hiss and fill before emptying with a forceful gush into U troughs. The sap truck has been busy all season hauling tanks of sap to be off-loaded into the stainless steel silos for storage until it’s ROed. Refrigerated tanks hold the sap concentrate until boiling. The practices of old have evolved, and it is as it should be.
Three hardwood maples stand outside the reach of the blue lines on the home farm. The smooth-faced boy, now decades older with grey whiskers on his rugged face, went out with the gator one spring day taking along pails, spiles, and a battery-operated drill to tap them. One maple grows back by the creek while the other two stand tall in the south fence line. They smiled knowingly when he drove alongside. He tapped them and attached the buckets then waited. The maples have obligingly filled and refilled those pails, and it gives him much pleasure.
He has named that three-tree woodlot Wild Edge Maples*. I think his heart is shaped like a maple leaf.
*A nod to Over The Rhine and their album “Meet Me At the Edge of the World”.