April is maple month. Our lives revolve
around the weather, and the running of the sap. Cold nights and
cool days make for the best runs. Minus five at night, and plus
five during the day is perfect. If we get several of these days
in a row, the sap runs fast, and we spend day after day up in
the sugar bush, boiling and boiling the sap.
 |
| name="valign"
top >
VIKI MATHER |
Weather being what it is, the "run" rarely
lasts more than a few days at a time, and this gives us a
chance to take a break, bring in more firewood, and spend some
time at home making all sorts of maple treats.
The best of maple season is the first day of
tapping. This will be the first sunny, warm day of
spring.
We'll ski the two kilometres from home to the
maple forest, then begin to set up shop: drill a small hole
into the south side of the tree, tap in the spile, then hang
the bucked to collect those first sweet drops. By the time a
couple dozen trees are tapped, enough sap has collected in the
first buckets to go have a long, cool drink of pure joy. The
first sap is the sweetest, and only available to those of us
who are lucky enough to live with a maple forest
nearby.
We tapped the trees a couple of weeks ago -
and if the weather co-operates, we'll be collecting this sweet
sap at least into the middle of April. One year it kept running
into May.
We boil most of the sap right there in the
middle of the sugarbush. We spend long, sunny spring days
feeding the fire, filling the boiling pans, walking around to
each tree to collect its gift, and back to the fire to boil
some more.
All through the season, we drink the sap
while working in the bush. Most often it is fresh and cool from
the tree. Sometimes we'll have a cup of boiling "maple tea" to
sip while we watch the steam rise form the pans.
The purity of this sweet water is
unsurpassed. It makes me feel very compassionate for all the
people who now drink bottled water, and have no access to this
pure sweet water of spring.
Viki Mather lives by a lake near Sudbury.
