Sap Sucking Will
I am a proud Canadian, as many of you know, and part of that, is my affinity for maple syrup, and my appreciation of the process in which it is produced. Today I went to visit some friends of mine, and on their property, they have a few tapped sugar maples, with buckets hanging to collect sap. I asked for, and received permission to get myself a drink. It brought back some fond, fond, memories:
- Walking across a river on a makeshift rock walkway
- Stepping into the river after misjudging the sturdiness of one of the rocks
- Lunging the rest of the distance putting full faith in a tree to pull me to safety/dry land
- Shaking a bucket to separate the ice from the unfrozen sap
- Licking my lips to delay the freezing of my skin to the metal bucket
- Turning the bucket so that enough sunlight gets in so that I know when various tree chunks are floating toward my mouth
and of course,
- That sweet sugary goodness of the just the sap, a pleasant foreshadow of what is to come with the 40 times boiling off of water
To those oversees, Canadians or not, make sure you make it here once to taste fresh maple sap, you can't beat it.

   [ posted by William @ 4:37 PM ]