The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky Page B

end of the building. The sharp tang of woodsmoke mixes with the sweet vapors of boiling sap. Steam from the cupola is fanned away on the gusty March winds. Underfoot the bare ground is damp and soft, and from the wood-lands comes the clean breath of snow. In the distance the Green Mountains are massed against the sky, their domes and peaks shining white in the sun.
    Men and boys gather sap with horse-drawn sleds bearing large containers. The horses plunge and snort where the snow is deep, and the workers scramble from tree to tree, empty the buckets into the gathering tubs, hang the empties back up and plow on to the next maple. Sap must be gathered frequently because, like milk, it sours in the sun. In some of the more modern establishments sap is piped directly from the trees to the storage tank, but most farmers stick to the good old-fashioned way. Loaded, the sleds are hauled back to the sugarhouse. Voices ring above the rustle and scrape of runners, the creak of leather and wood, the jingle of bits. A barking dog scampers along beside the horses. The sap is poured into the storage tank, which occupies the cool north side of the sugarhouse.
    From this tank the sap is piped to the evaporating pan resting on an arch over the fire in a long furnace of brick or iron. The evaporator is divided into compartments to facilitate the flow of sap and provide greater heating surface. Cold sap, admitted by the automatic regulator, forces the boiling sap onward. As it boils down the liquid increases in density and sweetness, passing from one compartment to another. Impurities are skimmed from the surface, and felt strainers remove the nitre, or “sugar sand.” In the last compartment a thermometer indicates when the boiling syrup has reached the required 11-pound per gallon weight. After the syrup is drawn off a hydrometer may be used to measure the specific gravity and make doubly sure that the official weight is attained. Old-timers used to estimate this with remarkable accuracy by judging the drip or aproning of the syrup.
    There is real heat in the sunshine today, a forerunner of spring. The icy edge of the morning is gone. Bareheaded men work in their shirt-sleeves, warmed by the sun flooding through leafless branches. There is a sense of life stirring in the ground, in the trees, and the running sap is music in the tin buckets. Laughing boys stop to tilt the pails and taste the cool, flat, faintly-sweet sap of the maples. It is colorless like water but it has a pleasant flavor.
    Days like this usually come in March and April, although sometimes they arrive in February. The average four-week season is from about the middle of March to mid-April, but it has been known to start as early as February 22nd, or as late as the first week in April. Depending on the weather sugar-making may extend as long as six weeks, or last only two. Abrupt changes in temperature, cold freezing nights and warm sunny days are necessary for a good run of sap. The season begins when the ice-hard grip of winter is breaking and yielding to the first invasion of spring, and it ends when the continuous warm weather takes command.
    The first task of the sugar-maker is to get all the buckets and utensils out of storage. These, with the evaporator and storage tank, are scrubbed and scalded to gleaming cleanliness. Then the trees are tapped, bit and bitstock being used to bore the holes about breast-high. Metal spouts, or spiles, small pipes with a hook underneath, are driven into the holes, and buckets are hung on the hooks. Now it is up to the weather-man to make the sap flow.
    The informal beauty and grace of the maple is enough to make it seem incongruous that such a lovely tree should also be so utilitarian. But the rare quality of the product is in keeping with the appearance of the tree. There are nearly seventy varieties of the maple, the following six of which are found in Vermont: sugar (or rock) maple; black; silver; red; mountain; and box-alder (or