Sweet Memories of Maple Syrup

Long time readers may remember, but there was a time when the plan was for me and my family to live with my Mother on our old family farm. Upon Mom's death (is that a joke or what? She'll be 100 years old in seven days!) I'd buy the place from the estate and live there until I, too, died. Well, my sister Anne's suicide changed all of that, but this is a memory before that terrible time...

The farm was 40 acres, narrow and deep. To get to the back field and the woods you had to cross a crick (yes, we called it the crick, not the creek) on a cement bridge somebody (my Dad, the people before him?) had built. In midsummer, the crick was just a trickle of water (it drained all the fields) but in Spring, it could be a raging torrent and, when we were kids, my brother Joe, myself and Anne used to swim in it.

Back in the woods, I was always fascinated by a cement structure, rotting in the leaves. I pictured it a Roman or Greek ruin, but was told it was the foundation for the fire pit where they would render down maple syrup. Most of the woods, hell, even the massive trees in front of the house, were all sugar maples.

So, when Luanne, Jeremy and I moved back home, I rebuilt the chicken house to house chickens, goats (which I never bought) and pigs (which I did) and, come Spring, I was determined to make maple syrup.

I had no idea where to buy the thingies that you put in the hole to drain the sap and hold the buckets, so I bought 3/8 galvanized pipe sections and couplers. I drilled each tree out front in three spots (according to Mother Earth News, the homesteading bible at the time, that size tree could easily support that many holes) pounded in the pipes and hung buckets on them. Sure enough, each day the buckets were full!

Now, if you had NO experience with maple syrup production, (like me), you would expect the sap to be thick. Nay, nay! It was like milky water! I would empty the sap into milk jugs that I then placed in an unused chest freezer (to keep cool until I had enough).

Okay, so what to put the syrup in? I had a brilliant idea (even now I still think it was brilliant, lol!) I wasn't drinking in those days (a fact my wife at the time proudly announced to everybody who would listen) but I asked everybody I knew to save me any empty pint bottles of booze they might have. I put them in a big box in the garage.

Sidebar: Somewhere during that time, my sister Anne took me aside and said, "Hey what's going on? I thought you quit drinking!" I said (puzzled), "I did, why?" She said, "Then how do you explain all those whiskey bottles in the garage?" I laughed my ass off, although she didn't think it was all that funny. Women!

So, anyway, finally it was the big day. I had scrounged a big 3 inch deep stainless steel pan (maybe 3 foot by 4 foot) from somewhere. I set it on top of two rows of cement blocks, built a fire under it and filled it with the first of many, many jugs of sap. I stuck a candy thermometer in it (now days I'd use my digital thermometer, lol, but they didn't have them back then) and kept refilling the pan with fresh sap.

Two things to note: You can't do this inside, say, in your kitchen. The steam itself is sugary-sticky and would trash the whole place. And, the difference between maple syrup and maple sugar is like five or ten degrees! You really have to watch it!!!

But, I did. And, finally it was done. I filled the pint bottles with the wonderful syrup, banged in corks I'd bought at the hardware store, then dipped the cork and bottle end into melted paraffin. Damn, but it looked cool! I gave some out to my family and friends, but hoarded most of it.

And, that's the maple syrup story...