On Tap

By Richard Root '06

Illustration by Mary Azarian

Having just loaded the arch with another round of wood, I push the right-hand firing door closed, slip my now hot gloves off, and walk out into the woodshed to cool off. The arch is instantly roaring hot as the draft is restored and the flames and heat are drawn into the flues of the back pan. Having not been outside since coming in from gathering an hour or so ago,

I'm surprised by how much cooler it is now.

It has been a long day. We'd had a wicked run right from about 10 a.m. on, and now, the thermometer at about 25 degrees, and the forecast calling for it to get up into the low 40s again tomorrow, it seemed that things were lining up for another day. Harry's on his way back to camp to get something for supper—we hadn't originally planned on eating out at the sugarhouse.

I brush some wood chips off the chopping block and sit down. The sun's been down for about a half-hour now and the heat that I've built up throughout the day is now quickly being pulled out. I shiver and hunch up my shoulders, stretching my feet out, and leaning my back into the sugarhouse wall. As I am staring at the woodpile, I notice we've already burned off a full two rows.

Behind me, the evaporator continues to get louder. The flames are just now getting up through that layer of fresh fuel and the front pan is responding by coming to a hard boil. The front pan and the back pan make two distinct sounds when they're both going at full tilt, and I can now hear them both. The back pan sends out a deep boiling roar as the sap is driven into a mad foaming frenzy by the intense heat coming off the drop flues. The flat front pan sends up sheets of small tight bubbles that together create a clamoring high-pitched din.

We like to run our evaporator with just over an inch of sap in the pans. That gives us a good quick boil and still leaves just enough sap so that we aren't at an immediate risk of burning the pan if the level were to drop rapidly. Some sugar-makers run their evaporators with as little as three-quarters or, at the very least, a half inch of sap in them. But that's too close for comfort for me. When Harry and I are really trying to move off some sap, we'll let her slip under an inch, but only if the both of us are right there watching. If a sudden spike in heat or a drop in the inflow rate occurs, you've got to be right on top of it or, at the very least, your syrup will take on a scorched flavor. At worst, the pans could burn, and your season would be over.

The sap should need a skimming by now, I think to myself, and ease up off the block. The flue pan is boiling especially hard at the moment, and large puffs of foam are wafting upwards.

I skim both pans, flinging the light brown scum onto the ground below the arch. The foam in the back pan continues to be unruly and threatens to spill over the sides of the pan. I put a tiny drop of defoamer into the middle of it and it drops instantly.

Surface tension on the boiling sap causes that layer of foam to accumulate. When a drop of the deformer is in the sap, it keeps down every bit of foam for about 25 or 30 minutes, before it wears off. But some foam is good as it brings any dirt or gunk that might have gotten in the sap and holds it on the surface where it can be skimmed off. The old-timers used a speck of butter or hung a piece of lard over the edge of the pan. When the foam rose up, it would hit the fat and drop right back down.

Hot again from standing over the evaporator I put on my hat and go back out into the now nearly dark night. Sitting on the block I look back into the sugarhouse. The firebox is still roaring, but it will need another round of wood in a few minutes.

There's a crack in the front casting of our arch, and because it stays closed up tight when it's cold, I don't recall even noticing it up until the first time we fired the rig. Now with the arch up to full temperature that "crack" is a gaping quarter-inch gash split right through the top rail above the left-hand firing door. Although I'd rather the darn thing wasn't there, its width lets us know just how hot the arch is running.

I pick up our small kindling ax, thumb its edge—still keen—and turn upright a slab of hemlock lying on the ground. Being a straight-grained wood, it splits with just the gentlest touch of the blade, and the pieces pop right off as clean as shingles fall off a froe. I grab another, this one with a dark red knot on the end, and hit a line that splits straight thought the slab, following the grain right around the knot. Gathering the pieces up, I toss them on the pile by the arch.

The breeze is gently coming in from the northwest, and the thermometer has probably lost a few more degrees. It seems that March days carry on much as the seasons do during the year, and it's the passing of the spring day into evening when we're snapped from one season to another with the sharpest transition.

During the day, the temperatures venture up above freezing and soften the snow. In those places where the sun shines down upon it, meltwater is now percolating downward and gathering in loosening streams. The wet smell of spring is out, and all those working outside are rolling up their sleeves and beginning to shed their winter wear.

While gathering sap in the sugarbush on days like this, I often leave my coat on a branch near the top of the hill, my sweater over a limb about halfway down, and my hat on a hook in the sugarhouse as I round up the last of the buckets.

Once inside by a boiling arch, with all the doors in the sugarhouse open and the steam vent billowing steam into the already damp day, I'd often wish that I'd never put on my long johns and wool pants. Then, as the afternoon carries on and the early part of evening comes on, the sun will touch the top of the ridge to the west, and all that was warm and wet is seized still by the frozen snow and ground that lay untouched by the March day that is now nearly done. Back in winter now, we'd close the sugarhouse doors and sit close to the arch.