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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
SPRING IS COMING SOON!
Once again I went through my archives to get out dusty pictures of a long ago past ;-)
In fact, I really didn't know what I was going to write this time with this simple post of a frosted maple leaf. Maple trees grow in Quebec (probably all through Canada, I cannot tell) and in the eastern part of the United States like weeds and since I was a kid, this tree accompanies my memories and play. The leaf is also on the Canadian flag and is used everywhere.
The strongest memory I have is going to the "cabane à sucre", the sugar shack, at spring. I was young, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and for a couple of years we went there, at the sugar shack of an uncle.
We were many kids running in the maple forest, making a contest of who would bring the bucket that's the fullest of maple water. You see, the maple trees produces sap that is gathered. Then, they used to make a hole and put a bucket underneath it to gather it... the sap would flow from the bark. We, kids, would gather the buckets not without drinking the freshest water you could taste, sweetened with subtlety. Gorgeous.
We would bring the buckets to the cart that was pulled by a horse. I remember this so vividly, the horse would walk in trails in the woods, pulling a big wooden barrel where the sap was being gathered. We would climb on the cart, run in the woods, drink water and smell and touch the horse... wow.
At the cabane à sucre, they would boil the sap. I remember there were different stages. There is a stage that is called "réduit"... "reduced" which means that the sap is not fully boiled to syrup and this hot liquid is so sweet, with the fantastic taste of maple... I am very very fond of maple syrup.
The women would then cook with the syrup: omlets in syrup, something called "des oreilles de christ" (Christ's ears) made out of pig fat, roasted in syrup, there is also "des pets de soeurs" (nun's farts) which is kind of a pie pastry with maple syrup, rolled and cut in logs (is that how it is made? don't remember that well).
What I mean is that eating at a sugar shack is not for diabetics, everything is cooked with maple syrup and very very sweet. One goes from such a day with a full belly and sometimes an urge to vomit ;-))
Nowadays, you have commercial sugar shacks where you could go and eat plenty of all those things I just mentioned, people also drink gin and wine, get drunk and dance.
The gathering of the sap is also industrialized, they link the trees with blue tubes in the wood which are going directly in the sugar shack. The sap is transported in those tubes by a pump. When you see such a maple forest, it's a very strange sight.
Sugar shacks and maple syrup are strongly knitted in our culture. It touches my French Canadian fiber more than many many things. It goes directly to my childhood memories of spring and the joy brought by it each year: maple syrup!
Thank you,
francine
shot in jpeg
ISO 800
Resized for TN
Contrast, saturation and sharpening in Picasa
MAPLE SYRUP TREES
There are six species of Sugar Maple trees. They thrive on steep, rich soils and during long, bitter winters. Each autumn, the tree provides a spectacular treat when its leaves turn color, painting the landscape with yellow, orange and scarlet.
The main maple producing tree is known as the Sugar Maple, or Hard Maple (also known as acer saccarum) which is the best provider of the highest quality sap. It grows as tall as 100 feet and is valued for it’s ornamental shade. It is also used in the production of fine furniture.
A few of the other main types of maple trees are The Red Maple (acer rubrum or Swamp Maple), The Silver Maple (or Soft Maple) and The Ash Leafed Maple (or Box Elder)
The Sugar Maple is the main producing tree. The sap from the sugar maple contains about 2% sugar, while saps from others contain half to two thirds as much. As well, the syrup made from other saps are darker and less flavorful.
While these species of trees can be found in several areas of the world, they mainly find their proper climatic environment for maple sugaring in parts of southern Ontario, the Province of Quebec, the Maritimes in Canada as well as the New England States in the USA, and ten other states as far west as Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Sugar Maples can reach a tappable size, under the best conditions, in about 40 years. Carefully tapped, a tree will give, drop by drop, about 12 quarts (litres) of sap on a warm spring day, and could continue to give sap for a century. During the maple sugaring season, which lasts about 6 weeks, an average maple tree will yield between 35 and 50 quarts (litres) of sap, which will produce between 1 and 1.5 quarts (litres) of Pure Maple Syrup.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SAP
Maple sap is thin, barely sweet and as colorless as spring water. The distinctive maple taste comes only through boiling. However, the sugar in the sap is a bit of a mystery.
It seems that each fall, the tree produces its own supply of starch to act as an anti-freeze for the roots in winter. With the melting of snow, water enters the roots and begins the circulation of 'sugar water' through the tree in preparation for the growing season.
As a result, sap runs in fits and starts from the first spring thaw until the buds turn into leaves from mid-March until April.
During the growing season, maples accumulate starch. With the spring thaw, enzymes change this starch into sugar which mixes with the water absorbed through the roots, imparting a slightly sweet taste. While maple water contains minerals, organic acids and maple taste precursors, water is its main component (about 97.5%).
MAPLE SYRUP FACTS
A maple tree lasts at least 30 years and is 12 inches in diameter before it is tapped.
As a tree increases in diameter more taps can be added, up to a maximum of four.
Tapping does no permanent damage to the tree.
Only 10% of the sap is collected each year.
Each tap yields an average of 10 gallons of sap per season,
yielding about one quart of syrup.
Warm sunny days (above 40º F) and frosty nights are ideal for sap flow.
The maple season may last 4 to 6 weeks, but sap flow is heaviest for 10 to 20 days.
Sap flowing in high volumes is called a "run".
The harvest season ends with the arrival of warm spring nights and early bud development in the trees.
30-50 gallons of sap are evaporated to make one gallon of syrup.
Maple Syrup is boiled even further to produce Maple Cream, Sugar and Candy.
It takes one gallon of syrup to produce eight pounds of candy or sugar.
A gallon of pure Maple Syrup weighs 11 pounds.
The sugar content of sap averages 2.5%
The sugar content of syrup averages 66.5%
HISTORY OF MAPLE SYRUP
No one is really sure just how long people have been practicing the art and science of making this wonderful product from the sap of a tree. However, there are two basic schools of thought about the origin of maple syrup.
The first group identifies with Native American legend and lore that maple syrup and maple sugar was being made before recorded history. Native Americans were the first to discover 'sinzibuckwud', the Algonquin (a Native American tribe) word for maple syrup, meaning literally 'drawn from wood'.
The Native Americans were the first to recognize the sap as a source of energy and nutrition. They would use their tomahawks to make V-shaped incisions in the trees. Then, they would insert reeds or concave pieces of bark to run the sap into buckets made from birch bark. Due to the lack of proper equipment, the sap was slightly concentrated either by throwing hot stones in the bucket, or by leaving it overnight and disposing with the layer of ice out which had formed on top. It was drunk as a sweet drink or used in cooking. It is possible that maple-cured bacon began with this process.
Before the advent of Europeans, the Natives used clay pots to boil maple sap over simple fires protected only by a roof of tree branches. This was the first version of the sugar shack. Over the years, this evolved to the point where the sugar shack is not only a place where maple syrup is produced, but also a gathering place where a traditional meal can be enjoyed.
However, some historians maintain that the Natives did not have the technology or tools to perform the necessary boiling of sap to make either product let alone both.
The first white settlers and fur traders introduced wooden buckets to the process, as well as iron and copper kettles. In the early days of colonization, it was the Natives who showed French settlers how to tap the trunk of a tree at the outset of spring, harvest the sap and boil it to evaporate some of the water. This custom quickly became an integral part of colony life and during the 17th and 18th centuries, syrup was a major source of high quality pure sugar. Later, however, they would learn to bore holes in the trees and hang their buckets on home-made spouts.
Maple Sugar production was especially important due to the fact that other types of sugar were hard to find and expensive. It was as common on the table as salt is today.
Even if production methods have been streamlined since colonial days, they remain basically the same. The sap must first be collected and distilled carefully so that you get the same totally natural, totally pure syrup without any chemical agents or preservatives.
Early maple syrup was made by boiling 40 gallons of sap over an open fire until you had one gallon of syrup. This was both time consuming and labor intensive, especially considering that the sap needed to be hauled to the fire in the first place.
The process underwent little change over the first two hundred years of recorded maple making. However, during the Civil War, the tin can was invented. The tin can was made of sheet metal. It didn’t take syrup makers long to realize that a large flat sheet metal pan was more efficient for boiling than a heavy rounded iron kettle which let much of the heat slide past.
Virtually all syrup makers in the past were self sufficient dairy farmers who made syrup and sugar during the off season of the farm for their own use and for extra income. These farmers were, and continue to be, folks who look at a process and say to themselves, 'There has to be a faster, more efficient, easier way to do this.' Then, in approximately 1864, a Canadian borrowed some design ideas from sorghum (what us northerners call molasses) evaporators and put a series of baffles in the flat pans to channel the boiling sap. The ideas continued to flow. In 1872 a Vermonter developed an evaporator with two pans and a metal arch or firebox which greatly decreased boiling time. Seventeen years later, in 1889, another Canadian bent the tin that formed the bottom of a pan into a series of flues which increased the heated surface area of the pan and again decreased boiling time.
For the most part technology stayed at this point for almost another century, until the 1960’s, when it was no longer a self sufficient enterprise with large families as farm hands. Because syrup making is so labor intensive a farmer could no longer afford to hire the large crew it would take to gather all the buckets and haul the sap to the evaporator house. During the energy crunch of the 1970’s, syrup makers responded with another surge of technological breakthroughs. Tubing systems, which had been experimented with since the early part of the century, were perfected and the sap came directly from the tree to the evaporator house. Vacuum pumps were added to the tubing systems. Pre-heaters were developed to "recycle" heat lost in the steam. Reverse-osmosis filters were developed to take a portion of water out of the sap before it was boiled. Several producers even obtained surplus desalinization machines from the U.S. Navy and used them to take a portion of water out of the sap prior to boiling. In fact, one is still in use by a producer South-East of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
History is nothing without our learning lessons from it. Today the technological developments continue. Improvements continue in tubing. Similarly, new filtering techniques, "supercharged" preheaters, and better storage containers have been developed. Research continues on pest control and improved woodlot management.
http://www.canadianmaplesyrup.com/maplehistory.html |
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