It’s kind of like the duck-rabbit illusion: one moment it appears to be a beautiful, country orchard, bathed in sunshine and promising luscious sap, the next it mutates to the inner rings of Dante’s inferno, a never-ending expanse of buckets, each heavy with back-breaking sap.
Because it is pretty heavy work. You’re not paying for nothing when you buy maple syrup (not ours, anyway). Understanding the process is not rocket science; it goes something like this. Walk to tree, carrying two five gallon pails. (Or, today, schlep through thick-but-soft snow to tree.) Remove bucket from tree. Empty sap. Curse as you try to replace bucket on spigot hook (the hooks are, I discovered, controlled by invisible goblins that delight in evading the bucket). Eventually replace bucket. Go on to next bucket. Empty sap. Curse. Eventually fill your two five gallon buckets with sap. Schlep back to tractor, hoping that Ethan or Kate (the tractor movers) has moved it right next to you. Find they haven’t. Make it back to the tractor anyway. Hoist bucket to empty sap into tank behind tractor (good for shoulder muscles). Repeat all steps.
Or, in pictures:
Margie and Ethan gather sap, strangely happy.
Traditionalists, we still use horses to pull the tanks of sap. Here, you can see we have 80 in the front and 85 in the rear!
We weren't alone in the orchard -- turkey track highway!
A close up of our tractor drivers. They're currently accepting sunglasses sponsorship applications for next season.
We gathered two full tanks in the morning, and another two in the afternoon. Sometime between the two shifts we gained reinforcements in the form of Ed and Matt. (Matt is a local who helps out on the farm some. Today he was recovering from the MPRE, which is the multi-state professional responsibility exam for lawyers. I just wanted to throw that in to show that lawyers really do have professional responsibility. Or at least we have exams on it.) In the meantime, I snuck out on a quick road bike ride. Ed and Matt were clearly better helpers than me, as the afternoon sap was gathered in about half the time of the morning’s! So sadly, when I got back from riding, there was no more work to be done.
There was a little unloading, however, so we set to that. Or at least Ethan set to, while Matt regaled me and Kate with tales of his misspent youth. I’d elaborate on the details, but this is a family blog. 
Let's just say his high school wasn’t happy with him. It was all so distracting that we all missed tank overflow, and had to rush to assemble buckets to recover as much as we could of the day’s labors! You can't really see the sap cascade down, but you can see Ethan and Kate arranging buckets while Matt, the likely cause of the catastrophe, looks on malevolently :) (You’ll be relieved to know that not too much was lost.)
So there ended a day's work. Don't worry, there will soon be more enthralling tales from the maple side of life. For after sap collecting comes ... the boiling! (Wot no maple syrup?)
3 comments:
Like an inner circle of Dante's inferno, eh? Yep, I seem to recall it got pretty cold and icy as one got further down. So who is this exquisite punishment of perpetually emptying buckets into pails being prepared for? Maybe for greedy bankers who, by sapping those who could ill-afford it, made themselves rich by persuading people that they had discovered a way of perpetually making more and more money by continually selling buckets of debts :)
I guess those invisible goblins that caused you so much trouble were in training for this new part of hell (I wonder which circle it's in).
Fortunately, you're stint was rather shorter and, we trust, will result in that delicious maple syrup and even more delicious maple cream :)
I liked "at the crack of 10.00 am" it is just the sort of crack I appreciate.
To save having to remove and then attach buckets (with difficulty) each time, are there no buckets with screw bottoms so the sap can just pour out into the one underneath?
I also loved the huge herds of horses, 80 and 85 strong. It took me quite a while to find them as, believing you to be utterly traditionalist, I was looking for the wrong shape!
The sunglasses were not too visible, infortunately, but the turkey tracks were. Do you ever follow them for a lunch?
The writer of part of the article is obviously becoming very American - use of "some" meaning " a bit," use of "snuck" meaning "popped off for" and one or two lonely "l"s .....
I was glad to hear that, in spite of the stories, most of the sap was saved. The thought of it just disappearing into the ground after all that effort (I calculated about 240 buckets from each person!) was just too awful to contemplate.
As I read through, I realized I was reading the process backwards! It had crossed my mind that initial holes and bucket placing had not been mentioned. Where was the ice you spoke of? Was it attached to the side of the tree and so had to be punctured to put in the tap?
I was very surprised to read you were light on the wellie front. Richard's farm had hundreds of them all over the place. Do you just use heavy duty grade ones?
Moving now to the Mayval Farm site: What is raw milk? Is it straight from the cow and therefore unpasteurized? I loved the pictures of the animals and the countryside as well as the description of the history of the farm and its buildings.
I had not realized that that horse I gingerly sat upon was an ex RACE horse!!
Well, at least sapping the strength of those collecting sometimes seems about right. I should make better use of that pun in blog entries!
I have to write in American. People don't understand otherwise :) But it is a self-conscious American. And I can still spell properly when pressed.
You need to click on the photos to see them when they're small. Try it!
Post a Comment