gg-non-fiction
Sugaring
Submitted by ggevalt on February 13, 2008 - 22:44.This story appears in the March issue of Vermont Life.
By Geoffrey Gevalt
YWP Editor
It is March and late at night, so late I don’t want to know the time. I am outside under my “sugar roof” watching sap boil. My family is inside asleep. One light burns in the kitchen, a beacon. It’s 22 degrees, forecast of 40 tomorrow – another run coming. A spotlight from the rafter shines on the steam and the pan, a tiny two feet by three feet. I’m nearly out of sap and am determined to squeeze out just a little more syrup before shutting down for the night.
I am, by every possible definition, an amateur at this. I tap 40 to 50 trees a year. I use third-hand buckets and the new narrow-gauge taps. In any given year I will haul, in clean, five-gallon paint buckets, 400 to 500 gallons of sap. Do the math: Each gallon of sap weighs about 8.5 pounds. (A gallon of syrup, if you wondered, weighs about 14 pounds though Vermont syrup is heavier because we cook it longer – tastier that way.)
