Stoking the fire as the maple sap boils, one man ponders his sweet solitude
Making maple syrup is now the most Canadian self-isolation activity of all. It’s just me, my axe and the boiling sap
The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic exactly coincided with a vital rite of spring in Canada’s eastern provinces: the celebration known in Quebec as “le temps des sucres,” translated into English as “sugaring off.”
My family had gone to Quebec City for a March Break ski trip, which got cancelled when Premier François Legault shut all the province’s ski hills to slow the spread of the virus. In the Quebec City newspaper Le Soleil, I read crisis reporting from a cabane à sucre, the French word for a sugar shack, called Chez T- Mousse, near my mom’s home in Papineauville. The owners were gearing up for their busiest season, when buses disgorge throngs of seniors to breathe in the fragrant steam that wafts from the evaporator pans as the sap boils. Guests then sit shoulder to shoulder at long tables with plastic tablecloths, to feast on the delicacies of the season: Oreilles de crisse ( crispy pork rinds), beans with pork, baked omelette, smoked ham, pickled onions and beets, sausages, thick slices of white bread and butter and pancakes, all slathered with sweet, fresh, thick, dark maple syrup.
But the cabanes were as closed as the ski hills; the owners were in panic mode. As for us, we turned around and drove back to Ontario.
Sugaring- off season can be a very social time, but one part of the job is profoundly solitary: boiling the sap. This is especially true in our family sugar bush, near the village of Madoc, Ont., about half- way between Montreal and Toronto. My operation consists of a pan about the size of a school desk and the depth of a kitchen sink, balanced on iron bars on the ruins of an old evaporator, deep in the woods. To build a fire and keep it stoked while the sap boils away is a one-person job.
Our daughter and son had helped with the heavy part of the job: collecting the sap from 45 buckets hung from sugar maple trees. Then they left me alone. One must boil down 30 or 40 litres of sap to make one litre of syrup; thus the sugar maker need stay in the woods for a very long time. It is a perfect recipe for social isolation.
I stayed alone with my axe and my thoughts. But I never felt alone. All around me, the forest slowly stirred to life. Cities do not seem particularly healthy places these days; people skitter around furtively wearing masks, and spots for healthy outdoor activity, like parks and playgrounds, are cordoned off with yellow police tape. But the forest is the definition of health. Birds chirp. Buds prepare to open. Creeks thaw and a trickle of water adds to the soft music. With no leaves yet on the trees, the forest is never so sunny as in early April.
Around me, sugar maples are recharging themselves with liquid from their roots. As the sap rises through the cambium layer of the maple’s bark, the spile drips out a small amount, and right after we’ve emptied the buckets, with the forest so quiet, one can hear the tiny “ping!” as a drop of sap hits the bottom of the aluminum bucket. This adds to the soft symphony of spring.
By necessity I interrupted the silence and social isolation on a recent Saturday afternoon, when my sap abruptly turned to syrup and I needed help to get the molten liquid off the fire before it burned. I called my neighbour Gunter, who is 88. He rumbled up on his tractor. Behind him came his son, daughter- in- law, and their children and grandchildren: nine helpers in all. It appears they had relaxed social distancing rules for immediate family, but kept their distance from me. Hot foaming syrup soon filled a white bucket.
One of the great-grandsons, who is 14, had helped by opening the door. I strained the syrup through a felt cone and, wearing work gloves, caught some in a jar to give him a taste. Then I filled a jar and gave it to his grandmother.
They all left. The neighbour stayed and held the funnel as I filled many small and larger jars with syrup. The sun shone. I had stripped to my T- shirt in the heat of the action; now I felt the chill and put on my jacket. My helper climbed on his tractor and rumbled off. I stayed and scrubbed my pan a long time in the fading light.
I grew up on a farm in western Quebec. We trudged through deep snow to collect sap; the crystalline snow crept over the tops and into our rubber boots. Never have icy, soaked socks left my feet so cold. Still, maple syrup season has remained a sacred time for me, when we celebrate the return of the light, the rising of the sap and, more fundamentally, the health and bounty of our land.
The Journal de Montréal reports that Érablière Raymond Meunier & Fils tried to open for a sugaring off celebration, but police arrived to make sure people were not dancing too close together. The sugar shack has since closed. One can only hope that by this time next year this crisis will be over, and jolly visitors can once again pack the sugar shacks, coude à coude ( elbow to elbow) to gorge on the syrup-lathered treats of sugar season.
Until then, please buy some maple syrup next time you go to the store to help out those syrup makers isolated alongside their evaporators to bring you the sweet taste of spring.