“Hearing the sugar was made from Trees in Canada, and being thorough Loyalists, and not wishing to be mixed up with the Contest about it to be carried on, we packed up our effects and came over to Canada. So wrote Catherine White: Loyalist Narratives from Upper Canada, describing how they fled to American Revolution to discover our land of milk and maple syrup.
A half-century later, a miraculous cure for cholera by Stephen Ayres was described by Susanna Moodie in her 1852 Roughing in the Bush or Life In Canada. “First he rubs the patient all over with an ointment, made of hog's lard and maple-sugar and ashes, from the maple-tree; and he gives him a hot draught of maple-sugar and lye, which throws him into a violent perspiration. In about an hour the cramps subside, and when he wakes he is perfectly restored to health.” And some still call them the “good old days!”
In Ontario, the sap may start flowing in the sugar bush as early as Valentine’s Day and last until late April depending on the season and what part of the province you live in. The first boil though averages about 19 March.
The appropriately named Sugar Maple, or Acer saccharum, is the tree of choice. However, those with a sweet tooth have used other maples, although none are as productive as the Sugar Maple. A lack of suitable maples has even driven desperate westerners from Alberta to Alaska to tap Paper Birch, Betula papyrifera.
Sugar Maple trees can soar to 30-metres where the soil is suitable and reliably moist. Farmer Henry Merlau of Wellesley, near Kitchener, Ontario in 1987 claimed to have the tallest, however. The stately, 400-year-old tree was 39.6 metres, or as high as a 13-storey apartment tower, Mr. Merlau told The Globe and Mail.
Other maple trees have inspired poets and composers. Walking through the Leslie Nursery, Toronto in the fall of 1867, school principal Alexander Muir was inspired to write a patriotic poem, ‘The Maple Leaf Forever,’ later set to music. The first piece of sheet music to sell a million copies was Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ of 1899. Joplin was black and had earlier composed ‘Sunflower Slow Drag.’ ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ in various translations went international becoming, for example, ‘Rag Javorove ho Listu ho Ustu’ in Czechoslovakian.
A Sugar Maple may take more than half a century to grow to a trunk 30-centimetres across. It is then ready to have single hole, or ‘tap,’ bored into it. Every additional 15-centimetre in diameter permits an additional tap.
In days gone by, a bucket was hung below each tap. People ploughed through often deep, wet snowfalls to carry the sweet sap to a tank mounted on a horse-drawn sled. When full, it was taken to a sugar shack to be processed.
Modern technology has made life much easier and less exhausting. In Ontario only about 10 per cent of sap is still collected by bucket. Over 90 per cent of the time, plastic tubing is attached to each tap. Usually, inducing a vacuum in the tubes helps flow along.
Alas, porcupines and, especially, squirrels have discovered that this is a reliable source of sap. It beats biting off twigs high in the tree to lick up the sweet treat. In the city especially, this may explain fresh cut twigs found below maples in early spring.
There’s a good reason to boil down the sap in a sugar shack: the resulting steam can make things very sticky. Even if you have a handy Sugar Maple tree, it is not a good idea to try making syrup in the home kitchen.
It takes somewhere around thirty to forty gallons of syrup to make one gallon of maple syrup, according to Rebecca Rupp in her 1990 Red Oaks & Black Birches. The average maple tree in the sugar bush, she says, yields about 12 gallons of sap (or three pounds of sugar) per season.
Maple syrup is the classic accompaniment for breakfast pancakes. Another treat is maple-walnut ice cream. But depending on what temperature the syrup is brought to in the sugar shack, it can also be made to produce hard maple sugar. This is often poured into moulds to result in fancy-shaped candy. Lower temperatures produce maple “butter,” higher ones maple “taffy.”
However, not everyone is excited over sugar time. The U.S.-based National Council of Dull Men advised on its web site: "In March we like to watch maple trees during sugaring time. Sap dripping – just right to watch – the right pace, the right suspense.” They also claim to enjoy watching paint dry.
Some even get downright insulting. “Why don't you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?” challenged Grouch Marx in the old movie Horsefeathers. And it could only have been a disillusioned Torontonian who queried one spring: “What do you get if you cross a groundhog with a maple leaf?” And promptly answered: “Six more weeks of lousy hockey”
Further information:
www.ontariomaple.com
