4/10/09 IN MAPLE SUGARING, AS IN SCIENCE AND LIFE, ONE QUESTION LEADS TO ANOTHER

Friday, 7:15 AM. 31 degrees, wind W, light with gusts. The skies are clear with some haze, and the barometer predicts sunny weather.
The sap run was lighter yesterday, only about 30 gallons. It didn’t get below freezing Wednesday night, and the current theory according to Andy is that it is necessary for sap to freeze in the root cells at night for the sap to run, as the melting creates carbon dioxide, the gas pushing the sap up the conductive tissues of the tree. If that is the case it should be a good run today. Andy says this is the longest sustained sap run, which began more than a month ago, that he has experienced. I will help again this morning, collecting sap and splitting firewood, but then will take some time off to catch up on my own work. Andy and Judy have their family coming to help, starting with son Eric who arrives tonight, so I don’t feel remiss.
One of the joys of maple sugaring is maple sap tea, which I dearly love. It’s just a standard tea bag steeped in boiling maple sap that is about half way to becoming syrup. Adjust the sweetness to taste by taking the liquid from an earlier or later part of the evaporation process. In maple sugaring, sap is poured into the top of the evaporator, and it circulates slowly among the evaporator baffles until it is boiled down to syrup, lighter or darker, according to official standards or one’s own, and drawn off to be filtered and bottled. Andy keeps little bottles of syrup which are samples of #1, #2, etc. syrup to use as examples of the different grades. Boiled down beyond syrup, sap becomes candy and finally granular maple sugar. One can also use a hygrometer to measure the sugar content to determine the grade of syrup, but I expect most syrup makers know what is right according to their experience. I like a really dark syrup as well or better than the lighter grades, it is really all a matter of individual taste. There are two stoves pictured, the one with the evaporator top, and an old cook stove with sap being preheated, and water being heated for cleanup.
As I have said before, there are many theories as to why maple sap runs when and how it does, but that leaves greater questions, such as why it is sweet and runs early, when the sap of most other trees is and does neither. It is pretty much an axiom of science that when a question is answered, it creates other questions equally difficult that must be answered, and more of that tomorrow.