By Carla Blackmar

Winter comes early and stays late in Charleston, New Hampshire. Before going up to visit my cousins there last last March, I was warned to bring some serious boots, since the early spring is "mud season" up North, as the melting snow-pack gradually saturates the thawing earth and makes for a slippery, goopy mess. As the mud begins to flow after the winter freeze, so does the sap in the maple trees, which were planted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries on the mountains edging NH's Connecticut River. I had been invited up for a visit in this season of limbo to witness a phenomena that I'd dreamed of seeing since I was a child; the process of "sugaring off."

On the drive up from the city, we were amazed by how much snow remained on the sides of the roads in New Hampshire. The last snowfall in Boston had melted away a week ago, giving us city dwellers the impression that spring was well on the way. But in New Hampshire the snow was only deeper as we went on, and when we arrived at my cousin's home in Charleston, we found it was still covered in a five foot embankment of glittering whiteness. We were assured that appearances were deceiving, though, and that though it looked like winter, we had arrived on a day when the weather would be just right for sugaring.

As even San Diegans learn in elementary school, trees loose their leaves in fall and become dormant for the winter months when limited sunlight and freezing temperatures make the processes of photosynthesis unprofitable for the tender deciduous leaves of the maple. Then in spring, when the sun begins to return and the temperatures are less forbidding, it the sugary blood of the trees begins to rise up to the branches once again, to provide energy to budding leaves which will soon be set out to collect the abundance of summer light. It is, of course, this sugary sap which can ultimately be made into sugar and syrup. The best time for collecting the sap is when temperatures during the day must have a springtime warmth, but the nighttime temperatures dip back down into a wintry freeze, keeping the sap running between the base of the tree and the branches, and out the tap stick into the tree's wood.

It was the Native Americans who first discovered the sugary potential in the trees, and many bands would set up spring camps in areas with an abundance of maple trees, spending the month of March collecting sap from the trees and then boiling it into powdered sugar which could be stored and traded. The early European settlers learned this skill from the Native Americans, and it soon became an important alternative to imported sugar from the Caribbean. In the 19th century, Quakers promoted the consumption of Maple sugar and syrup as a form of economic protest against the slave economy on the sugar plantations in the south. Though cane sugar and Maple sugar were equally priced in New England through the late 1880s, the maple sugar production process could not keep up with the dropping prices of cane sugar through the 20th century. More costly though it continues to be, Maple Syrup is still in demand.

On this occasion, we visited the sugar house at Wood's Cider Mill woodscidermill.com near Springfield, Vermont, just across the state line. The sugar house at this farm serves dual purposes, housing a press where the fall's apple harvest is squeezed into cider, as well as the large stainless steel evaporator where a wood burning fire condenses the sap from the surrounding maple trees into syrup. Now owned and managed by my cousin's hockey buddy Willis Woods, who is the sixth generation in his family to farm the property, developing a maple sugar business takes some long-term commitment. It was only this past year that some of the older maples were taken out of service and re-constituted as a new Sugar House. Fifty years old at the time of cutting, the trees had been planted by Wood's grandfather's cousin who worked the farm before him.

<< Sap is funneled through plastic tubing to a stainless steel evaporator, which is fueled by a wood burning furance.

>> The Evaporator concentrates the sap into a syrup.