Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Maple Trees Sing

Two Quotes From: https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/maple.html

Maples are such sociable trees...They're always rustling and whispering to you. By Lucy Maud Montgomery

"I always feel at home where the sugar maple grows.... glorious in autumn, a fountain of coolness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage, warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year round" By John Burroughs


17. Maple Syrup Day
Did you know that this sweet and unique flavor originated in America?
Native American Indians were the first to harvest and boil the sap of the maple tree into a thick syrup.
Talk about, well, maple syrup, of course.

We have Maple Trees. They are beautiful in the fall. The flat, green leaves have 3 points. I look for them to sprout in the spring. The sound of them blowing in a breeze is comforting. If there is a heavy rainstorm headed our way the leaves turn upside down.

We tapped trees once. It takes 20 to 60 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. It depends on the sugar content of the sap. This is one of the reasons it can be so expensive to buy. The sap has to be boiled down to eliminate liquid, leaving only the heavy sweet syrup. People who tap trees have to be careful not to put in to many taps. The sap is the life essence of the tree. Too many taps can kill the tree.

We did not have a good enough set up to make a lot of syrup. It takes a long time to boil the sap at the proper temperature. We were using propane in the house. The house was filled with sap steam and the over powering maple sweet smell of boiling sap.

Many years ago my uncle owned the adjacent farm. There was a maple syrup house in the woods, where there were a lot of Maple trees. The family boiled large caldrons of sap using wood fires. The sweet smelling steam would rise from the open windows of the sap house.

As kids we went out to play around the operation sight. It was a lot of fun. The men were using a two man manual saw to cut logs for the boiler. One day they thought it fun to give my cousin and I a job cutting a piece of log. Two girls managed one cut. I wonder how old I was that year? Young grade school then.

I use maple syrup to make my favorite granola recipe. This is the wrong time of year for Maple Syrup Day. The trees are silent. Taking a winters nap until spring. Only the roots deep under ground may be working to make the sugar sap that rises in spring to feed the tree for another year?