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    Wild Sugar: The Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup
    Wild Sugar: The Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup
    Wild Sugar: The Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup
    Ebook140 pages43 minutes

    Wild Sugar: The Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup

    By Susan Carol Hauser

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    About this ebook

    Maple syrup and maple candysunbursts on the tongue, gifts from nature. In this lyrical account, Hauser tells the story of sugaringwhy the sap can be harvested only in the Midwest, New York, New England, and southeastern Canada; how to gather it; and how to make syrup and candy and how to enjoy them. She also tells the story of the American Indian traditions and of their practices that are essentially used today in backyard sugar bushes and in the maple syrup industry. Wild Sugar also includes instructions for those who want to tap a tree and make syrup, recipes for those who love the taste of maple, and an account of one family’s sugaring adventure for those who love lore and history and a good story.

    Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Good Books and Arcade imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of cookbooks, including books on juicing, grilling, baking, frying, home brewing and winemaking, slow cookers, and cast iron cooking. We’ve been successful with books on gluten-free cooking, vegetarian and vegan cooking, paleo, raw foods, and more. Our list includes French cooking, Swedish cooking, Austrian and German cooking, Cajun cooking, as well as books on jerky, canning and preserving, peanut butter, meatballs, oil and vinegar, bone broth, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateAug 19, 2014
    ISBN9781629142999
    Wild Sugar: The Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup

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      Book preview

      Wild Sugar - Susan Carol Hauser

      SECTION I

      SUGARTIME

      In northern Minnesota, in late March or early April, the ice is still on the lakes, and snow is still on the ground. But below the earth’s surface, seasonal warming has begun and sap starts its journey up into the trees. We know this is happening because of the birds that return, first the bald eagles, then flickers, and robins, and we know it because for seven previous winters we have sugared and I have kept a daily journal of dates and temperatures, of gallons of sap and pints of syrup.

      This year on March fifth, after several days of forty degree temps, we trudged out to the storage shed and retrieved our sugaring equipment: electric drill, aluminum taps, called spiles, pails and liners, and hammer. We plodded through the knee-deep snow to the four nearest maples trees and drilled into the frozen wood. Three of the four started dripping when we pulled the drill from the hole. We hung pails lined with plastic sugaring sacks, even though we knew it was too early for a good sap run. For the next two weeks the temperature stuck at thirty degrees and the three cooperating trees yielded up only a few quarts of sap, far less than the average one-half to one gallon per day per tree we could hope for later on.

      Almost every year we tease ourselves into the same premature behavior, eager for this special time to begin, and betraying our contemporary attitude. Until the middle of this century, for the Ojibwe people, sugaring was one point in the cycle of seasons. Just before the month of the Sugar Moon they moved from their winter camp to the sugarbush. Later they moved on to their gardening and berry summer camps, then to the fall and winter hunting camps. Sugaring was part of the circle.

      For us, for my husband Bill and me, sugaring is a step out of the circle. For several weeks in the months of March and April we give up the clock and the calendar that guide us through the weekdays and weekends, day times and evenings of the rest of the year. We are led instead by the flow of the sap, which rises and falls to whim of the temperature.

      By March we are ready to give up our meticulous winter routine. We eat by the clock because daylight fails us. During the week we work days and sit quietly at night, as though if we moved about too much we might break something cosmic made brittle by the cold. On the weekends we do chores in preparation for the week.

      The trees do not mind our eagerness to join their party, even when we attempt to preempt the season by a few weeks. The taps just sit there, dry if the tree chooses, or damp with maybe a drop or two if the sap is stirring. Most years we are ahead of ourselves by at least a week.

      This year on March eighteenth I stop, as usual, on my way to the mailbox and check the four test trees. It is a warm day, the temperature easing up to forty-five degrees. I am expectant, and my anticipation is rewarded. The spiles of the three trees that released sap sparingly since we tapped them now drip steadily, and a drop of sap quivers on the lip of the spile on the fourth tree, the one that remained dry for the last two weeks. I watch the clear bead gather strength and let go, and continue to watch as another takes its place. Then I resume my trek to the mailbox, smiling all the way there and back, eager to return to the house with the news: Sugartime has

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