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Mud Season Harvest: Maple Sugaring in Vermont
| Article
# : |
20404 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1992 |
3,346 Words |
| Author
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Richard Sweterlitsch
Richard Sweterlitsch, a Pennsylvania native, is assistant
professor of folklore and English at the University of
Vermont. |
In March, Orion dominates the sky, and snow blankets the earth. Leafless trees, with their branches reaching into the sky and their roots gripping the soil, link the heavens to the earth. Although the days are becoming longer, the early months of the year continue to bring winds and snow and cold that stings to the bone
In Vermont, winter fosters solitude. Smart people stay inside their homes, venturing out into the blustery cold only to pick up the necessities of life at the local market or to refill the wood box with logs stacked to dry in the backyard two summers before. Flatlander's tourists who don't know better flee their urban homes in order to ski the slopes and cross-country trails. They hope to exorcise months of a city life from their bodies and psyches with the brisk, fresh air of Vermont winters. But most locals, though tolerant of the gaudily dressed skiers, huddle around their stoves, as did their ancestors, and wait.
Their time is coming. A special private season begins in late February and continues through March and into early April. At this time tourists abandon their ski-slope condominiums and return to city life, believing that Vermont has little more to offer; though the flatlanders hare the other four, the natives claim Vermon'ts fifth season, the mud season, for themselves.
Spring and winter struggle for dominance during mud season. Warm days promise Vermonters what is to come, and cool nights remind them of what has been. Back roads, plowed down to gravel and dirt, thaw out during the day, but a shallow frost line keeps the earth below the layer of mud frozen. As snowmelts or a light rain falls, the countryside is transformed into a quagmire. Rural Vermonters know this is the time to be off the roads and in the woods, where the snow is still knee deep.
During mud season, folks harvest the sap from the sugar maple tree. When the watery liquid is boiled down it becomes a sweet syrup or, if boiled even further, a rich, brown sugar. Of all the states and provinces where maple trees are tapped. Vermont alone has become identified with maple sugaring, and its syrup is the benchmark against which connoisseurs measure maple syrup and sugar produced elsewhere. While any variety of maple can be tapped, the hard or rock maple (Acersaccharum) is best for sugaring and is thus sometimes called the sugar maple.
The reasons for Vermont's dominance are simple: To Vermonters, sugaring is an important part of rural life. A rich
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