Tapped That: Our First Sap Boil
Anyone else feeling the spring thaw? I’m all for a solid ski season, but I’m praising heaven for the warmth of sunshine on my face and more hours in the day. After 6 months, the snow is melting, the ice is breaking up on the lake, the birds are singing, trees are budding, and sap is running. Life is returning to the land and the air and me, and it is all so sweet! For us, this season of life that is upon us is going to be full of growth and change, which isn’t always easy, but is sure to bring something new. For us it’s a spring season on all accounts, and Wisconsin has brought new meaning to it. There is beauty in the silence of a Wisconsin Spring that I’ve never noticed anywhere else before: no boat engines, no snowmobiles, no leaf-blowers or lawnmowers, just birds and squirrels, the drip drop of snow melt, and the drip drop of the sap run.
Spring season is sap season! Sap boiling in the Northwoods is one of the coolest things I’ve experienced since moving to Wisconsin. I grew up in the high desert that is western Colorado (#westslopebestslope), where the most prolific greenery is Juniper and sage brush (two of my favorite plants), with an incredible number of tumble weeds. Think Wild West. Now here in Wisconsin, we’re bordered by 10% of the world’s fresh water, surrounded everywhere by lush leafy foliage, and playing on grass that grows on its own (Max thought a “sprinkler” was just something you attached to the end of a hose to water plants…not an entire irrigation system solely responsible for turning the desert green); northern Wisconsin has never seen a tumbleweed. Know what it has seen? Maple syrup. It might sound silly, but maple syrup, pure maple syrup is another thing I didn’t grow up with. Ever check it out at the grocery store? That stuff is pricey (and oh so good)! But way up here the forests generously provide, and everyone and their great aunt has it cooking, so this year we decided to try our hand at making our own batch of maple syrup.
Last year, we didn’t boil, but we collected a few gallons from a couple of trees and enjoyed it as it was. We swapped the kids’ juice for sap, added a bit of sap to the water in the coffee percolator, and poured it over snow to make snow slushies. It was a super special treat; and even though we didn’t make it into syrup, we enjoyed the magic and wonder of the experience. This year is different: our kids more mobile/sturdy/self-sufficient/weather resistant, and our lives are a bit more settled — this February marked the first time in our 10 years together that we have not moved houses, moved states, changed jobs, been in school, worked opposite schedules, been pregnant, or given birth…sigh. Can you imagine? It’s been a pretty nice year. So we went all in: invested in a used boiling pan and a few more taps and made daily visits to 22 of our Maples.
We marked the maple trees on our property in the fall by tying ribbon around them (cute right?), and adventured through the woods to drill a hole and place each tap. A thick plastic blue bag hangs from the tap, the sap starts running and fills it up, then we (sing it with me) tip it over and pour it out. Maple sap is the consistency and clarity of water and has a slightly sweet maple taste (1-2% sugar), and takes 40 gallons to evaporate down to just 1 gallon of syrup (66% sugar).
Sap runs in the spring when there are warm temps in the day (above freezing), and temps get below freezing at night. When it is warm, the sap runs up from the roots of the trees to the branches to start filling them with nutrients to grow leaves. At night, it runs back down to the roots to keep the tree from freezing. ISN’T THAT FREAKING AMAZING!? Nature is so neat! Nature is so smart! Anyway, that’s what happened these last few weeks. Spring has sprung and it has been glorious. Once a day, we’ll walk through the woods with 5 gallon buckets and and collect what the trees have graciously offered. We have collected about 200 gallons of sap (and pretty impressive arm muscles) this season.
The sap boil in action as the water is evaporated off to thicken the sap into syrup.
It’s pretty cool how simple it all is. Max stacked some cinder blocks, put our boiling pan on top, and lit a fire underneath. It’s going back to the basics and spending the entire day hanging out in the snowy woods stoking the fire and boiling gallons and gallons of sap down to a few beautiful jars of golden maple syrup in time for tomorrow’s breakfast. Sap boils are a part of the culture that runs as deep as cheese, ice fishing, and beer drinking. How blessed are we to be surrounded by such an incredibly strong sense of pride, gratitude, and tradition? I’m not a Northwoods girl by birth, but I’m thankful to be able to have our kids tapped into this connection to nature and culture - that has been the best part of it all. Teaching them to show and feel gratitude and appreciation and to be in awe of nature and all that it provides us. Teaching them to respect the trees is like teaching them to respect people (call me a tree hugger…do it). They drink straight from the tree and say, “thank you, tree!” It makes my heart sing, and I pray, through all the Spring seasons of change and growth, that they will never lose that connection.
I hope that in your Spring season, that you are able to hear the sweetness in the silence and feel the sweetness in change. And if you haven’t tried real maple syrup, take the plunge and splurge. It’s the difference between a perfectly cooked steak and chicken nuggets - they’re not even the same animal.
