“Sugaring season is the season when you tap the trees for sugar that turns into maple syrup . . . I like the idea it’s the very, very first murmurings of spring.” —Beth Orton
Images Courtesy of Ginny Neil.
It’s one of those moments. The sun has just peeked over the rim of Bullpasture Mountain and suddenly the heavy frost is gold and silver and all that glitters. But, the prettiest thing I see as I drive to work is clouds of steam rising and roiling dramatically in the early morning light.
After a winter of long nights and cold days, my soul rises just like the steam. It’s sugaring time in Highland County, Virginia, and spring can’t be far behind. All up and down our 400 square miles of mountains and valleys, farmers are at their sugar camps magicking the rising water of the warming trees into syrup.
It’s an industry, a gathering, a celebration and a tradition rolled into a backbreaking season of hard work and hope. Will there be a good run, this year? The answer to that question is weather-dependent. In late summer, the trees stop putting energy into growth and leaf production and store all the excess starch they have collected in their xylem. As winter temperatures plunge, the starch is held there. Cold days and cold nights essentially put the trees to sleep.
Then, the February sun kisses the trees awake and they transform the stored starches into sugar which passes into the tree sap. The warmish days—and the resulting pressure differential between the trees and the surrounding air—pull
groundwater high into their crowns. The cold nights send it back down the trunks and it gathers sugar on the trip. We all hope for a long season of perfect sugaring weather. But, there is no way to know for sure.
Sugaring is a deep rooted tradition here. There are families boiling water in pans and kettles passed down to them from grandparents and great-grandparents. It is not part of my farm family’s tradition but when he was 18 my oldest son and a friend decided to try their hand at it. The boys spent weeks drilling holes, hanging buckets, collecting water and boiling it off. They made a little money from the five gallons of syrup they produced, but the majority of their income came from selling their extra sugar water to another producer.
My eldest only did this for a couple of years before moving on to more lucrative, less work-intensive enterprises. Many sugar camps are seeing this same trend as their children grow up and move on. There are worries that the long tradition could possibly end with this generation or the next.
The changing climate is also a factor. Scientists predict that if the world continues to warm at the current rate then, by the year 2100, the maximum sap flow region will have moved about 250 miles north. Highland is at the southern edge of sugar maple country. Our long tradition is in danger of becoming obsolete.
It is hard not to worry about the future of small-farm enterprises like the sugar camps dotting the hills and hollows of my home. But, the weather is warming, the sugar is rising and the smell of syrup is in the air, so I choose hope.
Over 10,000 visitors come to our county each year in mid-March to marvel at the miracle of the sweet water rising. Amid all those people, there are children tasting one of the cycles of the natural world. I like to think we are doing our part to help those children love the earth and make better choices than we have. The trees and all that they represent are counting on us.
Clinkers!
A local tradition for many families is making clinkers.
Ingredients:
- 1 c. real maple syrup
- cake pan of crushed ice or actual snow
- craft sticks
Directions:
Keep pan of ice or snow in freezer until ready. Boil syrup and cook to 240oF. Pour the hot mixture into six long strips over the ice. Then touch a craft stick to one end of each strip and gather the sticky treat.
The story above first appeared in our January / February 2023 issue.
