Now that we have reached the middle of this changing month of March, we have seen some glorious springlike days. One warm sunny day was enough to melt the 2 inches of ice that had resided on my driveway for the past couple of months. The melt extended to parking lots and roadways, as well.
I remember those March days of my youth, when my brother and I would make pathways in the mud for the rivers of snow melt to run through. Our farm house was set on a hill, with the barn and chicken coop below the hill. The whole farm itself was below a steep hill, so there was plenty of water and mud to make rivers in.
This is also the time that maple syrup producers are getting ready, or even beginning, to tap their maple trees. In the days of my childhood, that was one of the favorite times of my life. My brother and I would fairly fly home from the one-room country school, slamming through the farmhouse door, running up the stairs to our rooms to change clothes, and then rush out up to that wooded hill, where Pa would have a tractor hooked to an old wooden wagon filled with empty milk cans.
My brother and I would rush from maple tree to maple tree, grabbing sap pails and carrying them to empty into those milk cans. It mattered not that there was snow, rocks and tree roots trying to trip us up. I can remember the excitement of the collecting of the sap.
It was fun to catch a drip of sap off the tap, and lick it off my finger, or even to drink some out of the pail. Of course, it was slightly sweet, but nothing compared to the syrup that came from the cooked down sap.
The thing I most looked forward to was taking the cans of sap to the open sap pan in the woods. Pa would be in charge of the fire, adding wood to the area under the pan. I can still close my eyes and see the steam and smoke rising from the area; the aroma of the two mixed together remains with me to this day.
For my brother and me, it was fun. What can be better for a youngster than running around outside in the spring, getting dirty in the mud, and getting to taste the sweet maple syrup that ultimately resulted?
I can remember Pa having to get up in the night to go and keep the fire going under that sap pan, so I am sure he didn’t enjoy that part. I can remember Ma having to bring it inside, on the stovetop for the final cook down, and that was sticky and messy, so I am sure she didn’t enjoy that part. Everyone found great pleasure in that sweet syrup on our homemade pancakes.
In these modern days, people have found shortcuts to doing maple syrup. Plastic lines are used to bring the syrup into holding tanks. Evaporators are used to cook it down, and process it to the end product.
This is the time of year that I love, the mud, the cool days, the warm and sunny days, little rivers where none were before. As you travel around the countryside these days, watch for a maple sugaring operation, you will find it by the spiral of smoke and steam rising in the sky.
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