Eric’s been journaling during our adjustment to these rapidly changing times, so I’ve created a page on The Way to the Clearing for him to post his thoughts. Here is entry number two.
(For Patti’s blog posts, visit the homepage or click here.)
Yesterday I didn’t get through the 30 gallons of collected sap, and those snow flurries? By evening, those snow flurries climatically morphed into a wonderous white everything. Sitting in the house while it was still light out, the volume of snow quietly falling obliterated the view out every window. After night had fallen, I shined a flashlight up into the sky. In it’s beam, the falling snow looked like stars whipping past the Starship Enterprise traveling warp speed—whatever that is—through dark space. This morning, all is still and white, blanketed in eight and a half inches of soundproofing. A perfect spring day.
Not.
Well, it is beautiful, but not very spring-like, except the temperature quickly increased above freezing. As the temperature rose, the snow on the balsam firs and red pines keeps sloughing off the laden bows as it has after every snowstorm over the centuries. “Get off of me, I want to be ready for spring.”
Jeff and I met in kindergarten and were friends for life. I remember as kids, vaguely, he and I boiling maybe a couple gallons of sugar-maple sap we excitedly collected from the trees in his yard. We boiled the sap on a Coleman stove in the shed attached to his house. We thought for sure we’d be slurping the results of our efforts for days, weeks to come. The problem was neither of us, nor our parents, knew at what point sap becomes syrup, and the Internet didn’t exist. We watched with utter dismay as the volume in the boiling kettle got smaller and smaller and smaller. By the time we figured we might have syrup, it suddenly turned to molten candy, and then, even more suddenly, it started to smoke.
As the sugar concentration increases with decreasing water content, the boiling point of the sap-soon-to-be-syrup increases. As mentioned previously, the boiling point of water changes slightly with the barometric pressure. Thank goodness someone figured out that when the boiling temperature of the boiling sap is 8°F greater than the boiling point of water, it is perfectly syrup.
As sap comes close to syrup, it’s simple: Check the temperature of a pot of boiling water, add 8° to that temperature, and that’s the temperature the syrup is done (if you can see the thermometer through the steam). It’s a beautiful thing.
Like spring…