Sugar Shackin'

It was a long week at work, definitely a hard one after being away, so I was super excited when my friend invited me over to a maple syrup making party at her house today. Fire, food, alcohol, and syrup: sounds like the recipe for a perfect Saturday!

I know several people that make syrup, so I knew the process. Stand around, watch it boil, add more. It's not the most exciting thing in the world. But if you invite people over and make a party out of it, you can make the time pass quickly. Make no mistake, making your own syrup in no way saves you any time or money over buying it. Forty gallons of sap needed to make 1 gallon of syrup. Boiling down 40 gallons is not a quick process, and with the amount of wood you go through, you could have easily bought plenty of syrup from your local sugar shack. But that's not the point, is it? It's nice to say you made something, it's nice to know the process, and it makes you appreciate the way things used to be done.

I always have great ideas and intentions, but I'm either too busy or disorganized to pull them off. My friend is me with focus. There was a wonderful brunch, thoughtfully selected to include foods that went well with maple syrup. Homemade hard cider was on tap. Handmade and wrapped salted maple caramels, and maple sugar cookies kept us going through the afternoon. There was even a hand-drawn mural in the mudroom and print-outs of maple leafs that you had to color in and write your "sugar" name on. That's the type of thing I would think was cute to do, but would never get around to putting together. Best of all were the whiskey teas, a wonderful combination of whiskey and syrup from the most-cooked tray in the fire. Cures what ails ya!

Can you say "Perfect Saturday?"

This was one of the more organized set-ups I've seen. Fire blocks creating an area to place the fire, just long enough to fit three pans. One end was open so we could feed the fire, the other end had a chimney. The idea was to have different levels of cooked material in the pans. The one closest to the opening was fresh sap from the buckets. The middle one had been cooked slightly longer, and the one by the chimney was the good stuff, the most boiled-down material. As that tray boiled down, you would then add a few scoops from the middle tray, then replenish the middle tray with sap from the first one, and restock that with sap from the bucket. There was also a strainer so you could skim off the foam, in theory increasing the surface area of exposed sap which should make it cook down quicker.

The challenge seemed to be in getting the fire spread evenly. The middle pan was always boiling at a good clip, but the outer pans were hit-or-miss. You really had to be diligent about moving the wood around and keeping it hot enough to really boil. It would be going well and then you'd walk way to grab a drink or play some cornhole, and all your work would be undone. We definitely went through a good number of buckets today, so I think good progress was made. They said they would probably have it going again tomorrow, as there was more to boil off and still buckets hooked up to the trees.

I had a grand idea of hooking the GoPro up and getting a neat time lapse of maybe the syrup cooking down, or everyone around the fire. Knowing the batteries were crap, I brought my solar charger thinking I could keep the camera going. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans and we had neither the warmth nor the sunshine we were promised today. So the camera died after almost 2 hours, and it was the 2 hours right before all the action started. A little disappointing, but what's to be done?

Now I'm all warmed up again, reeking of maple and smoke, and there's a sleeping cat on me. I'm oddly sleepy considering I did nothing more than eat and drink today. But it was lots of fun to hang out, and I got to spend time with a friend I don't see nearly enough of, as well as meet some new ones. That's a pretty good day to me!