The Perfect Yankee Sweetener

Back in the early 1970s, I was introduced to making maple syrup by my first father-in-law, the Cap’n. Like many things the Cap’n introduced me to, they were duties more than pleasures. He wanted to do it, needed it done, or expected it, and my first wife ( the dutiful daughter) decided that Wes should make it happen.

So as it happened I learned lots of Down East Yankee skills – ” if’in I needed to, or not…” I worked in boat yards, learned to sail, learned local coastal English, and I briefly even worked for a lobsterman. I also learned to make maple syrup. That was a lot for a city boy from New York City! I expected that to end with the divorce and entrance to grad school.

The strange thing was that when I got to grad school and started to firm up a desired career track as an anthropologist, it did not include Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, or some such place as my graduate committee desired. It was the Coastal Yankee stuff that I reevaluated and found interesting. Eventually, years later, I returned to boatyards and to marine carving.

So when I moved into my current house, I looked out at the maple trees in the woods beyond the house, and then looked at the price sticker on the bottle of syrup, and decided that I could make my own. That began years of very early spring treks into the woods as soon as sap started moving. Then came hours of steamy boiling down of sap into syrup.

Over the years of doing that, the trees become partners in the production. You don’t take more than you need, and their health is important to you. Homemade maple syrup is the perfect addition to locally made ice cream and creates a true New England Saturday dish out of baked beans. As the old-timers said, “Stoah bought won’t do!”

Then a dead tree on the neighbor’s property fell onto the largest tree in my “Sugah Bush” ( Yankee English for a patch of syrup-yielding maple trees) and badly damaged it. Actually, three trees in total now need to be removed because a bad enough storm would take out parts of both our houses. Today the crane arrived to remove the trees, and I said goodbye to a tree that had yielded perfect syrup over the years.

Soon I’ll go out into the woods with some marking tape and survey the Sugah Bush. I’ll be looking for trees that I can start tapping for syrup. In spring, I’ll tap those lesser trees for the first time. I’ll walk much farther with the buckets full of sap, probably get less syrup, and set down for a rest in between trudges. A friend who also taps suggested carving the stump into a piece of furniture, a chair to rest in when tired. He suggested that in that way the old maple would still be a part of the sap-to-syrup process.

I thought about this for a while, and then another thought came to me. Most of the younger trees I’ll be putting spiles into for the first time were the descendants of the old trees that will no longer be there. With their shade removed, more light will penetrate into the woods, and they’ll produce more sap.

More sun, more sap. More sap, more syrup. Maple syrup – the perfect Yankee sweetener.