| Spring Time and Maple Syrup |
While in the fifth grade, we had an elderly lady school teacher who was born, raised and lived on a farm. She told us stories about farm life with her parents and making maple syrup. She gave us books to read, showed movies and gave us all of the details. Her enthusiasm and vivid memories made it real to all of us and I was ready to harvest the sweet maple sap. I studied the tree books on how to identify sugar maples. There are many types of maples in the woods, and in the winter they pretty much look alike to the untrained observer. With no leaves, you learn to identify the trees by looking at their bark. This was kind of tricky and it took me several tries to get it right. Margaret Ice, our neighbor and owner of the farm adjacent to our home took walks with me into the woods and helped me distinguish the differences. After two or three trips, she took me to a convenient area and where I found the sugar maple trees needed. I used to compare my book to the trees and then talk to her about them. Margaret was a super person to be around because she knew every thing about a farm. She was never without a story and I was all ears. Stories about Indian raids, burial grounds, and how they survived the early Indian wars were hair raising to say the least. Through her stories, I gained great respect for her family and learned to appreciate her many years of wisdom. The area selected to tap was a pathway lined with sugar maples through which I had traveled a thousand times to and from my fishing hole on Buffalo Creek. Margaret showed me how to tap the first tree and then it was up tome to do the others. I selected four large trees with a diameter of more than 24 inches. It was important to tap large trees because they would not be significantly affected by the loss of sap. All summer the trees produce the sugars in their sap and then stores it in their roots during the winter months. When the winter daylight hours begin to lengthen and the warmer days of March come, the sap begins to rise in the tree. It is then, the trees are tapped for their sweet life giving sap. Preparing the trees for tapping was a lot of fun. First Margaret gave me anold tapping ring to start the first circular cut. It was like a hollow punch. One solid hit produced a sharp circular indentation about a quarter of an inch deep into the bark. A second hit punched it through and in to the pulp wood. A hand drill was then used to drill a reservoir about two inches into the solid wood. Now it was time to insert a hollow wooden dial through which the sap would run. The wooden dial was made from an elderberry brush. The same kind of bush from which I made blow guns for shooting wild green cherries. The dial was hammered into the tree and a soft putty-like material was used to close the wound where the dial entered the tree. A small notch was cut on the dial to hold the buckets made from Campbell soup cans. Margaret emptied the cans in the morning and I emptied them in the evening. We collected the sweet sap until we had about ten gallons and then on a Saturday morning, we started the process. Margaret had a coal burning stove with which she heated the house and on it was a flat burner for heating water. It was on this burner, we placed a pot of maple sap and left it to evaporate until it was about one inch deep. During the day, Margaret added more sap and after school, I tended it. During my evening watch, Margaret told me stories about her mother and father, the Dutch Ice's, who helped settle Barrackville. Tending the trees which had given us the sap was now necessary. In each of the tapped holes I plugged a wad of putty-like material which Margaret gaveme. Every few days I checked them to be sure the life giving sap had stopped dripping. Each evening I tasted the contents of the pot and with each day the liquid got sweeter and sweeter. When the sap was all gone and the liquid in the pot had thickened, Margaret poured it into a pint jar and placed it on the shelf in her kitchen. On the jar, she place a special sticker which read, Joey and Margaret's Maple Syrup. The next Saturday morning Margaret made a stack of home made down on the farm pancakes and on them we poured our home made maple syrup. Those were the best pancakes ever made and I remember them as though it were only yesterday. We sat at her table, laughed and smiled with pride. Margaret was not finished, she called my fifth grade teacher and told her the whole story. The next Monday morning, I told the class how we tapped the trees, collected and made the maple syrup. Afterwards, I let each student use their finger in the syrup for a sample taste. Need I say, I got an "A", could do no wrong and was the teacher's pet the remainder of the year. Back to Story Menu |
