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Classic: Making Maple Syrup
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"The guys in the sugarhouse were giving themselves spit baths and straightening their collars," Shelley recalled. "We thought she was coming herself."
The old-fashioned part ends with the horses. Once Robert Howrigan built the central sugarhouse, he devised a network of lines that ran down into the main house. This was in the 1960s, when laborsaving methods were beginning to invade the sugaring industry. He and his sons set up central vats -- stainless-steel tanks -- where the sap could be dumped, and it would run by gravity feed down to the sugarhouse, right into the evaporator. "I remember one morning I sent one of the children down to make sure the lines were all right, that there weren't any leaks, and he came running back. 'Dad!' he said. 'The sap is shooting way up into the air!' "
Sap is not like oil, and it should not gush up out of anywhere, most especially from the lines that are delivering it to the sugarhouse. This experience pushed Robert Howrigan to the next step. He buried all the lines throughout this vast 400-acre sugar bush, an impressive feat.
Inside the sugarhouse, he replaced the wood-burning evaporator with one that runs on oil and wood, and more recently his sons invested in a new invention, an evaporator that runs off the steam that it creates. Robert Howrigan has good cause to take exception to being branded old-fashioned.
In the sugar bush Shelley makes her way toward the sound of the horses. The creak of the wagons gets louder, and there's a snuffling as the horses exhale. In spite of the buried lines, it's still necessary to collect the sap from the buckets way up in the bush. "Hey there!" she calls.
Danny and Robbie are five years apart, and they look enough alike so that even though she has been married to Danny for 15 years, Shelley will still sometimes get him confused with Robbie.
They stop and set up onto the wagon. The big tank on the planks is full of fresh sap, as clear as water. They are nearly finished with the run today. In spite of the warm temperatures, they haven't collected as much as usual, and they say that this year may be the worst they've seen, ever.
Shelley sets the cooler on the wagon, and Danny and Robbie dig around for their sandwiches and sodas. Even with the horses' help, this is hungry work.
Their explanation for why they have not replaced the horses with tractors or four-wheel-drive vehicles is simple: "We like the horses." Besides, Robert Howrigan will say further, "Where can you find a tractor that knows which tree comes next?"
The horses, Scott and Moses, have been at this a long time, and they know the route up through this exquisitely rough road, replete with boulders and gullies, where even the most rugged four-wheel-drive could not go. It's a trip they make every day during this season, which can last as long as eight weeks but which is usually more like six. Even a veteran like Robert Howrigan cannot tell you the rules for sugaring season.
"We've made syrup in February, and I've boiled in May," he says. "If I've learned anything about sugaring, it's that next year will be different. It's not like haying or planting, in that you can get it tomorrow if today's not right. With sugaring there's no tomorrow. You either do it today or you've lost it."
The only thing you have to watch with the horses is their impatience. They know the route, but they also want to be done with it, and as the day comes to a close and those familiar last trees come into sight, Danny struggles to hold the team back in their haste to return to their stalls. When he was nine, Danny got his foot trapped under a tank filled with new sap, and his toes still remember that injury. That's the only injury he can recall in working these woods.
Reader Comments
Comment from Warren Phelps on February 21, 2008
Being originallly from Connecticut and seeing my mother tap a maple tree in Avon, Conn. as a child, it makes me long for Vermont. I have been there several times and would live there if I could afford a good warm house and a fireplace or cast iron stove. Several years ago, I spent several days with Montpelier as home base and drove to various towns of interest. On my way back south I felt as if the river beside the highway was offering me a race to the bottom. Stories of winter hardships overcome and maple sugaring are a delight for me, now living in Missouri. Thank you for this awesome website! Warren Phelps
Comment from Karen Beaudreau on March 23, 2008
I live right here in Vermont, the southern end. I can relate to maple sugaring. My husband and I tapped some trees at his parents property,( maybe 5 years ago back when propane was $6.00 a fill ) and we brought it back to our place to boil it on a propane burner with a high pressure regulator,and when we boiled it down far enough we brought it in the house and finished it off on the stove. I really like the darker maple syrup it has more of a maple flavor. I always like to read articles on sugaring Thank You Karen Beaudreau
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