Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [124]
But maples, however useful and beloved in the North, didn’t run with sap everywhere; for sap to flow, the seasons had to have the proper shape. “There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather,” Twain once declared, “that compels the stranger’s admiration—and regret. . . . [The weather is] always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.” Every year, he said, New Englanders killed a good number of poets for daring to use the phrase “beautiful spring.” Describing the New England spring, Twain was also unknowingly describing a perfect sugaring season—the long, northern springtime, when sap runs freely.
During the year’s first thaw, the sapwood begins releasing carbon dioxide; soon pressure builds up in the tree, pushing sap from any cut or hole. Then, when the temperature falls at night, conditions reverse; now the tree draws water in through the roots, replenishing its sap. Without the indecisive New England spring, wavering between beautiful days and frigid nights, the sap would flow only once; there might be a run for a day or two, but no real sugar season at all. People used to talk about sap “rising” from the roots in preparation for spring—and it’s lovely to think of walking over all that waiting sap in the wintertime—but the truth is that thick sapwood runs all through a maple. That makes for an enormous amount of sap; sugar makers take only 2 or 3 percent of a tree’s total.
Simmering all that down to make sugar (it required forty gallons to make eight pounds) would have taken days, especially for people without iron pots. Low-fired earthenwares were best suited for slowly cooking grains or stews; if the contents were brought to a high boil, the clay would eventually crack and crumble. “That’s a big loss, this time of year,” Jim says. “It’s tough to dig out the clay to burn more pots until after the final thaws.” No iron, and earthenware didn’t work well: that left boiling stones.
Beside the fire, Jim dumps a gallon of water into a six-by-fifteen-inch trough carved from a thick chestnut log, then starts fishing hot river stones from the embers with a pair of sapling tongs. When the first stone hits the water, it steams; the second raises a furious boil.
“You think it’d make a low simmer, steam coming off the surface,” Jim says. “But it’s this quite amazing, pyrotechnic boiling—if this was real sap, you’d smell the maple sugar already. You’d see it thickening around the rocks.” Erik actually stumbles back, less in alarm than delight, falling backward over a low fence of untrimmed branches and yelling, “The steam is coming at me!” Jim adds five more stones. Within two minutes nearly all of the gallon has boiled away, leaving a bare, hot film.
The boiling stones are incredibly effective; Jim thinks that using them means that sugaring would have had to be group work. “You’d have families coming together, working to gather the sap,” he says, “throwing in the stones, pouring in more sap as the first sap reduced and thickened.” Freezing the sap overnight might have sped the process somewhat—ice could have been lifted off the top, leaving behind sweeter, more concentrated sap. “When I’m doing this for real, I’ll keep pouring in fresh sap all day,” Jim goes on. “Finally it’ll be thick enough to finish at a simmer in a clay pot. You end with a real thick, dark sugar, perfect for traveling.”
“Dark” sugar is right; the soot from even seven stones has left the little water