When the Sap Runs

“A sap run is the sweet goodbye of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.”

John Burroughs

Winter turns to Spring. Nighttime temperatures remain below freezing, but the days are mild; snowmelt drips off roof lines, daytime runoff swells creeks and streams.

This is the season when sap flows in the fibrous veins of sugar maples of Canada and the Northeast United States. In fact, Indigenous people of these regions called the first full moon in March the Sap Moon.

My brother-in-law, who lives in Western New York, has made a hobby of producing syrup from a stand of maples on his wooded property. He’s tapped about 20 trees. These will yield enough sap for him to boil down into a modest supply of amber deliciousness for his family and a few lucky friends.

As the sun lowers into late afternoon, he invites me to trudge along with him through the newly crusted snow to help collect today’s sap, which has trickled through blue tubing lines from his tapped maples into one-gallon jugs at the base of the trees.

A couple of the jugs are filled nearly to overflowing, while others hold only a few inches of clear, icy liquid. My brother-in-law removes the spout (called a spile) from one of the under-performing trees and lets me drill and tap another maple that he thinks may deliver better results.

The new tree is more than 20 inches in diameter. We find a spot on the south side beneath a large branch about three feet off the ground and he patiently instructs me to position the drill so it goes through the dark brown bark at a slight upward angle, allowing the sap to flow easily. It oozes out instantly. With his guidance, I then use a hammer to tap the spile into the hole and attach the tubing.

Once we’ve collected the fresh sap—about six gallons of it—we reward ourselves with a taste of pure nature. Poured straight into a small glass, the lifeblood of the maple tree is crystal clear and flecked with slivers of ice. I take a sip. It is crisp, woody, refreshing, and, to my surprise, just barely sweet. That’s because raw sap, which is filled with antioxidants, nutrients, and minerals, is only two percent sugar. It will take hours and hours of boiling to reduce it to a sticky substance that’s 66 percent sugar and imbued with the distinctive maple flavor everyone loves.

On average, it takes 40 to 60 parts of maple sap to produce one-part maple syrup. In other words, my hard-working brother-in-law will need to harvest 40 to 60 gallons of sap for a single gallon of syrup that’s fit to pour over breakfast pancakes and waffles.

What a lovely example of operating in partnership and reciprocity with nature. Botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer points out that an enormous investment of human time, effort, and energy is required to transform the generous gift of the sugar maples; that it is indeed “our work, and our gratitude, that distills the sweetness.”