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Books About Life on a Farm Written Especially for People Who Like to Read! "Highly recommended reading." The Midwest Book Review Reviews & Readers' Comments |
LeAnn R. Ralph Rural Route 2 Author E6689 970th Ave. Colfax, WI 54730 (715) 308-6336 |
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by LeAnn R. Ralph Many years ago when my fourth grade teacher had said we were going to watch a movie about making maple syrup as part of our unit on Wisconsin, I sat up and took notice. In our little, west central Wisconsin farming community, maple syrup could occasionally be found in the grocery store, but no one made their own. When the Norwegian immigrants settled the area, they had cleared most of the land, and the woods that were left were either oak (and mostly scrub oak, at that) - or pine plantations that had come into existence after the Depression, when something was needed to stop erosion in the particularly sandy places. The only real bit of information I had about maple syrup was that from time to time, my father talked about when he was a little boy and had stayed at the lumber camp in northern Wisconsin where his parents were cooks. They often had pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast, and he said it was just about the best thing he'd ever eaten. Unfortunately, I'd never tasted maple syrup myself. Not that I wouldn't have liked to because pancakes were one of my favorites, but Mom always said maple syrup from the store was much too expensive. The teacher turned the lights off, and I settled back to watch the movie about making maple syrup The first step, the narrator said, was collecting sap from the maple trees, which could only be done at a special time of the year. The sap, he said, started to "run" in March. I sat up straight, scarcely able to believe what I'd just heard because it was March right now - and we had maple trees in our yard on the farm! So - if it was March and we had maple trees - then why couldn't we make maple syrup, too? After all, the narrator went on to say making syrup was basically just a matter of cooking the sap. When I got off the bus that afternoon, I practically ran up the hill of our driveway. I cleared the steps in one leap and yanked open the porch door. My plan consisted of asking Mom where Dad was, but as soon as I opened the kitchen door, I found it wasn't necessary. My father was sitting in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Even though I was surprised to see him because it was sort of late for his afternoon coffee break, I was glad I wouldn't have to run around to all the farm buildings, looking for him. "Daddy!" I said breathlessly. "Hi-ya, kiddo. What'd you do, run up the hill?" "Just about," I said, kicking off my boots. "How come you're in such a hurry?" he asked. "We watched a movie today about making maple syrup! Daddy, we have maples. Can we make syrup?" Dad paused and set down his coffee cup. "We've actually got the wrong kind of trees. You need sugar maples - and we have silver maples." The anticipation that had been building all day evaporated in the blink of an eye. My face fell to somewhere down around my stockinged feet. Dad reached for his coffee cup once again. "But our maple trees have sap, too, so I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try." "Oh, Daddy!" I squealed. "Could we?" My father smiled. "Sure. In fact, I noticed a little bit of sap dripping today, so what say we get started right now?" As soon as I had changed my school clothes, I went outside with Dad. He rummaged around in the machine shed until he found what he was looking for - a short piece of narrow pipe. Then we went over to the huge silver maple growing by the gas barrel. There were other silver maples around the yard, too, all of which had been planted by my great-grandfather. But this was the closest one. Getting to the others would have meant wading through a certain amount of snow that still remained. My father used a hammer to pound the pipe into the trunk, and a few minutes later, some clear fluid started to drip. It looked just like the stuff I'd seen in the movie. He nodded. "There's your sap. Now we need a bucket." We went to the barn, found a spare calf pail, scrubbed it out, and then Dad hung it from the pipe. "Every day when you come home from school you have to dump this," he said. "How many gallons of syrup will we make?" As I waited for Dad's answer, I noticed his lips were twitching, as if he was trying not to laugh. "Gallons?" he replied finally. "We'll be lucky to get a cup." A CUP? I tilted my head back and stared at the tree branches arching high overhead. Surely a tree this big could produce enough sap for more than a cup of syrup. Couldn't it? Dad must have known what I was thinking. "When you cook the sap, the water evaporates, so to make even a quart of syrup, it would take more sap than we'll get from this tree." "But if we're only going to make a cup, how many days will I have to dump the pail?" He smiled. "Days? It'll be more like weeks." I really couldn't believe it would take weeks to fill the kettle Mom said we could use (the one she always cooked sweetcorn in during the summer), but in the end, Dad was right - it DID take several weeks. However, much to my great delight, I discovered he had been wrong about the syrup. We didn't get one cup. There were two. And even though it didn't turn out as thick and rich as the stuff Dad remembered from the lumber camp, at least I was able to determine one other thing about maple syrup. It tasted just as good on pancakes as I had always imagined. LeAnn R. Ralph is the author of the farm books "Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)" (trade paperback; 2003), "Give Me a Home Where the Dairy Cows Roam" (trade paperback; 2004), and "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Interviewing Family Members and Writing Oral Histories" (e-book; 2004) |
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