My love song to Upper Valley has two themes: seasonality and sustainability. This blog is organized by month, with seasonally appropriate photos, essays, and recipes. Sustainable living practices naturally partner with the seasons.

Life in Upper Valley is dominated by the seasons. The rythmn and pace of life is dictated by the weather and all its vagaries. Upper Valley can be hot, and it can be cold. There is lots of snow, and a fair amount of rain. These conditions change from month to month, but can vary from year to year.

With a short growing season and often harsh winter, sustainability becomes a looming issue to residents of Upper Valley. Lessons learned here can be applied in a larger context if we but pay attention.

March

MARCH



MAPLE SYRUP

There is perhaps no food more closely associated with New England than maple syrup. This delicious, uniquely flavored syrup is distilled from the sap of certain maples native to this area. While maple syrup is not exclusive to Upper Valley, it is clearly an important part of the culture and local cuisine.


Long before European settlement, North American natives used concentrated sweetners made from maple sap. Native Americans discovered how to extract sap by cutting a gash in trees, inserting a wood chip to keep the wound open, and gathering the flowing sap.

Maple syrup and sugar are formed by extraction of excess water from the sap. There were two early methods of distillation: heat and cold. Sap was boiled, evaporating the wat22er until a thickened, sweet liquid resulted. Further boiling concentrated the syrup until its sucrose crystallized when cooled, creating maple sugar. The cold method involved freezing the sap in large, shallow vessels. The ice was then discarded, leaving the concentrated sap. After several repetitions, sufficient water was removed to leave a thickened and sweet liquid, what we know as maple syrup. The boiling method, somewhat refined, is still the standard.

In Upper Valley, sap is generally collected in March, after the first major thaw until the bursting of the leaf buds. After that point, the tree emits fluids that impart an unpleasant flavor to the syrup. Four climatic conditions influence the sap run. Good sap runs need a harsh winter in which roots are frozen; roots kept cold in the spring by snow cover, extreme diurnal and nocturnal variations of temperatures, and adequate sun exposure. Other tree species, such as birch, hickory, and elm, can be tapped for syrup. But the maple sap is the sweetest and most prolific.

The sap is gathered from the tree by drilling a hole through the bark and inserting a spout. The sap flows from the tree through the spout and drips into a bucket. The Abenaki devised their own method of drip collection. Sap would seep out of a gash or hole in the tree, but then it would merely drip down the side of the trunk, making harvesting very difficult. The Abenakis discovered that if a straight stick were inserted in the trunk just below the seeping hole, the sap would drip over the stick and into a lower vessel.



Grades are assigned to maple syrup based on color, flavor, and sugar content. The grading terminology and criteria differ depending on location. For example, New York State’s grading system differs from that of Vermont. In Upper Valley, Fancy, New York’s Light Amber, is the palest and most delicately flavored. Grade A, New York’s Medium Amber, is darker and more flavorful, while grade B, New York’s Dark Amber, is even darker and has a still stronger flavor. ( C, which is syrup that is too dark and strong to be graded, is used in supermarket blends.) To complicate matters further, Canada has five grades, and the United States Department of Agriculture ??????? The use of the various grades is a matter of personal taste. Those with refined palates prefer Fancy with pancakes, while Grade A satisfies those who prefer a stronger maple taste. Grade B is generally best used as a cooking ingredient. And ungraded or even burned syrup can be successfully turned into maple sugar candy.




A grove of sugar maples is called a sugarbush. Not all maples produce the right kind of sugaring sap: sugar maples, not red maples, are the desirable trees. It takes some amount of expertise to tell them apart, especially in March, when the leaves have not yet sprouted. A tree mature enough to tap is at least 40 years old and has a minimum diameter of ten inches. 

Although maple syrup may be cooked in a heavy pot on a stove, sugaring of any significant quantity takes place in a sugarhouse, a small free-standing structure generally near the sugarbush. The cooking vessel is called an evaporator, a heavy metal specially designed stove generally fired with wood. The sap is boiled at a high temperature until sufficient water is evaporated to produce a sweetened, thickened liquid the consistency of syrup. It is then cooled and placed in a tin or other storage vessel. When syrup itself is further evaporated, maple sugar, often molded as candy, is created. In the nineteenth century, maple sugar was the stock sweetner of the Northeast, priced competitively with cane sugar and easily transported in solid form.

Maple sap is mostly water and has hardly any taste before boiling. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.








WEATHER

March is a wet month.  Snow melt typically augments seasonal heavy rains.  As a result, the rivers and streams are often swollen and angry.  As the ice breaks up on the Connecticut, huge flows make their way downriver, a sight both powerful and a little frightening.  At this point, Upper Valley is ready for spring and warm weather.



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