As my husband made plans for maple sugaring, he learned to keep a close eye on the weather, and to be prepared to act. We’d always thought of February as the prime maple sugar month. But H learned last year that it’s the temperature, not the specific time of year, that determines the best sugaring conditions. The perfect fluctuation of temperatures, in fact, is necessary. Cold nights, when the thermometer dips below freezing, and warming, sunny days, are what gets the sap really flowing. During the second week of January, when temperatures ranged from the twenties to the forties, H tapped several sugar maples in my mother’s yard. Soon, the white pails were filling with sap. He checked them each night, emptying the liquid into a larger bucket for storage in our basement fridge.
He began the long boiling process on a weekend when he had few other projects. Every gallon of sap requires about an hour of boiling time. He’d collected about twelve gallons, and he boiled six gallons at a time. To avoid turning our kitchen into an ultra-high-humidity zone during six hours of boiling, H began the process outside on the grill. Once the amount of liquid had been reduced by about 80%, he finished the process inside. The longer the liquid is boiled, the more viscous it becomes. During this final phase, our house was filled with the heavenly scent of sugar-rich steam.
The reason that most maple sugar comes from northern locales is that the sugar content of maples is higher there. Sugar maples in northern states and Canada typically have a sap to syrup ratio of about 40-1, so that forty gallons of sap yields one gallon of syrup. Farther south, as here in Virginia, that ratio is about 70 – 1.
After the boiling process is finished, the syrup is filtered to remove any impurities.
A bit of early-season syrup, light in color.
My husband found that the sap from the earliest part of the season produced syrup that was light in color. Longer boiling does not affect the color, (unless reduced to the point of burning, of course). In taste, this early harvest was subtle. It was sugary, with only slight hints of maple flavor.
The late-season sap resulted in syrup that was a dark mahogany color. The flavor was bright and robust. It was pure maple essence. It takes more sap, and more boiling time for maple sugaring here in Virginia than in western New York, but the end result, we know now, is equally tasty. Mid-Atlantic maples can produce a liquid gold as fine as their Yankee cousins.
Hours spent around the big pot of bubbling sap, inhaling the sweetness of the steam, are apt to inspire contemplation. “Amazing, isn’t it, that we can extract this liquid from trees in our own yard and turn it into this great-tasting stuff,” my husband remarked. “And it’s even more amazing that the sap is there in the first place. There’s enough to nourish the tree, and plenty left over for us. If God were to boast about his wonders, this should be included.”
I agreed, and the biblical conversation between God and Job immediately came to mind:
Who created a channel for the torrents of rain? Who laid out the path for the lightning?
Who makes the rain fall on barren land, in a desert where no one lives?
Who sends rain to satisfy the parched ground and make the tender grass spring up?
Does the rain have a father? Who gives birth to the dew?
Who is the mother of the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens? (Job 38: 25- 29, New Living Translation)
God directs Job’s attention to his supreme authority over the skies, the seas, over light and darkness, and to the unique characteristics of his many, fantastically varied creatures, including lions and goats, the wild donkey, the ox, the horse and the eagle. The miracle of maple syrup could well be included among these marvels, it seems to me. Perhaps in words like these:
Who commands and compels the life-blood of the trees of the forest? Who sets the sweet sap rising and flowing in the maples? Who sends it forth to nurture and bless the woodpecker and the shepherd?
So yes, every taste of our homemade maple syrup is yet another reminder of the bounty of God’s gifts. It’s best enjoyed, in our opinion, over buckwheat pancakes made from the Cartwright family recipe. Our syrup may be from Southern trees, but my husband’s sugar-making experience is rooted in the wilds of upstate New York. The seeds were planted long ago during his first family visit to the remote Maple Tree Inn. One of life’s sweet pleasures still flourishes, across the miles and years. Grandpa Stan would be proud.
My husband taps a maple tree in my mother’s front yard here in Virginia.
Among my husband’s most cherished childhood memories are family outings to a remote location in western New York to feast on pancakes and locally made maple syrup. His grandfather Stan was a man of big, enthusiastic appetites, and he was a huge fan of maple syrup. He began the tradition of a mid-winter journey from Rochester, sixty-five miles south to Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn. Stan’s appreciation for maple syrup lives on in my husband. Last year, he decided to tap some of our Virginia maples and see what might result. His efforts were rewarded, and he repeated the process again this year, with certain modifications. His local syrup making will be the subject of my next post. But first, back to the sugar shack that started it all.
North to the Sugar Shack (first posted February 22, 2013)
The snowy landscape behind Cartwright’s, February 2013.
Last weekend, we drove to upstate New York for pancakes. Not just for pancakes. Pancakes and maple syrup. We met H’s family at Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn, a glorified sugar shack located, really, in the middle of nowhere. Its actual address is County Road 15A, Angelica, NY (2 miles from Short Tract), which, in the language of our GPS system, is “not on any digitized road.” Despite its truly out-of-the-way location in the midst of snow-covered fields, it’s a popular spot, with big crowds on weekends. It’s only open during the maple sugar season, which typically runs from mid-February through March or mid-April, depending on the weather. H’s family has been trekking out to Cartwright’s for decades, and now it’s among our winter traditions, even though our drive is far longer. Of course, we don’t return directly to Virginia, but spend the weekend visiting H’s family in Rochester.
Our daughter in front of the Maple Tree Inn, 2013.
The Cartwrights began producing maple syrup on their farm in the 1850s. The Maple Tree Inn dates from 1963, when the family decided to build a restaurant specializing in Grandma’s buckwheat pancakes served with their own maple syrup. In the adjacent shop, the syrup, maple butter and maple sugar cakes became available directly to the public. The somewhat ramshackle building has been expanded over the years and is now fairly large. It will win no awards for architectural style, but that’s not the point. In the chain-store sameness that dominates so much of our country today, the Maple Tree Inn offers a unique, quirky, authentic experience. It’s living history, and it’s worth a visit.
Before I met my husband, I had never tasted true maple syrup. The first time we ate together at PJ’s Pancake House in Princeton, I was surprised to see him pull a small container of pure maple syrup from his pocket. At the time, PJ’s didn’t serve the real stuff, although that has since changed. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. Growing up, when Daddy made pancakes on Saturday mornings, we used the typical supermarket syrup–Log Cabin, Aunt Jemima–whatever. H was no food snob, so I found his insistence on unadulterated maple syrup mystifying. That is, until that day at PJ’s, when I tasted the liquid from that little jar. H was right. There is no topping the perfection of the stuff that comes straight from the tree.
Visitors to the Maple Tree Inn are welcome to descend into the building’s lower level to learn how the sap is boiled down, in huge wood-fired evaporators, to its golden maple essence. Several years ago, a Cartwright grandson, no more than twelve or so, gave us a comprehensive tour that began in the frozen fields where we could examine the taps on the trees and see the liquid running into the buckets. This is not an option at IHOP.
These days, the rarified nuances of maple syrup, like those of chocolate, coffee and small-batch bourbons, are earnestly discussed at considerable length, using wine-lingo terms such as terroir. H doesn’t do this, although he can and does enjoy discerning, in blind taste tests, the variations between light, medium, and dark amber syrups. My palette will never attain such a degree of sophistication, but I can say this: a little true maple syrup makes life sweeter.
After a walk to explore the area around Cartwright’s, Kiko kept vigil in the car during our meal. Animal advocates need not be alarmed–he had his sheepskin bed and blanket if he needed to hunker down for warmth. Before this trip, in case it was particularly cold, we bought him a red plaid fleece coat. The temperature wasn’t low enough to warrant it, and he appeared perfectly comfortable, peering out from the front seat, when we returned. For his wait, he was rewarded with an extra sausage patty that H’s grandmother had carefully saved for him.
Kiko and I explored the area around Cartwright’s.
Kiko and D atop a tall snowpile on an earlier visit to Cartwright’s, in 2009. Kiko looks almost exactly the same as he did four years ago, when he was two. D, on the other hand, has changed.
Every year as summer deepens and July 4th comes and goes, my mind drifts back to some of my earliest memories. Over the Independence Day weekend in the early to mid-60s, my parents and I would join my mother’s side of the family in central Kentucky. July 4th would find us, not at my grandparents’ house in town, but, as we said, “up to the river.”
My maternal grandmother Nora spent her girlhood years, as well as much of her married life, on a rise overlooking the Rolling Fork River. Portions of the original log cabin on the site remained and had been incorporated into the white frame structure likely built in the mid-nineteenth century. Dates and details are lacking; my family tends to pass along the stories of the past haphazardly and in shattered, scattered fragments, so that the puzzle always remains incomplete. The photographic record is even more insubstantial. A couple of photos, above, from the 70s, show the farm, with its buildings, at a distance. I took some pictures of the house in 1986 (below) when it was in sad disrepair, after years of sitting vacant, shortly before demolition. I’ve been able to find no images that show it as the center of a thriving farm, and a happy, busy family home.
But I have memories of a time when it was exactly that. In those childhood days, my mother’s oldest brother Leland farmed the land by the river. By then, my grandparents had moved into the Queen Anne farmhouse on the Springfield Road in Lebanon that I remember with great fondness. Leland was the only one of my mother’s four siblings to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps as a farmer. He raised tobacco and Black Angus cattle. There were pigs, some sheep, and chickens, as well. When Leland and his wife Dessie moved into the old house in the 1940s, it lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. The structure was unassuming but relatively spacious. There was a wide staircase off the front entrance that led to several sizable bedrooms on the second floor. My grandmother and her two sisters, Alpha and Maude, had shared one room as little girls. Another was for her three brothers, Thomas, Clarence and George. My aunt and uncle, in the later years that I look back on, lived primarily on the first floor, using the upper rooms for storage. I vaguely remember, in one cozy downstairs space, an enormous brick or stone fireplace. It was suitable for a pioneer cabin, large enough to roast an entire side of beef. In a first floor bedroom, there was a narrow cupboard that could be locked with a heavy wooden bolt. It opened to reveal a slim staircase winding up to a single chamber, separate from the other bedrooms on the second floor. According to my mother, this was a feature common to rural homes of the time. An itinerant worker, or any stranger passing through, could be given a bed for the night, safely shut away from the rest of the family. A practical solution for extending hospitality to those we don’t know well enough to trust completely.
The house was never grand, but it was larger and more architecturally interesting than it appears here, in a dilapidated state, stripped of most of its exterior elements in preparation for being razed. I wonder if the log cabin portions were revealed during demolition.
In my memories, certainly the farm at the river was nothing if not hospitable. While I can no longer picture the house and its grounds clearly in my mind, those fuzzy images nevertheless conjure a powerful sense of belonging. I’m not sure if I ever spent a night in that old house, but I passed enough time inside and around it, in the company of loved ones, to recognize it as a place that breathed the breath of home. It was our place. Not in the sense of ownership, but of affinity, of kinship.
And in this sense, the river was our river, a well-loved member of the family. The highlight of July 4th, for that young me, was the time we spent splashing in the water and wandering the banks. From the house, it was a pleasant walk, down the hill, across the road, and through part of a field. Geodes and arrowheads were there among the smooth stones of the banks, for those with the patience to look. I loved the tiny gray-green frogs that hopped about among the rocks. For the most part, the river near the farm was fairly shallow, but there were deeper spots suitable for swimming, and for the thrill of plunging into the water from a rope swing. Rumors of blue holes of unfathomable depths abounded. I was probably in second or third grade before I saw the ocean. “Going to the beach” was a foreign concept to me until I was a teenager. Our family had no need for the ocean. We were river people.
Me, at the river, July 1986.
After an afternoon at the river in those old days, we’d head back up the hill for one of my aunt’s delicious meals. Now we’d refer to all the ingredients as locally sourced. Back then we just said home grown. There would be country ham or fried chicken, green beans, tomatoes, sweet onion slices, probably potato salad. Cornbread, always. My favorite dish was what we referred to as fried corn, which is fresh corn, straight from the field, cut from the cob and cooked on the stove in bacon grease or butter with a little milk and a bit of flour. It’s the luscious essence of summer on a plate.
Daddy skipping rocks at the river, July 1986.
Seems like we’d savor these festive summer meals outside, where we could gaze down on the river. We typically gathered in the front yard, seated in an assortment of metal garden chairs and webbed lawn chairs. The entire farm was a land of enchantment for me as a kid. In addition to the river, there was so much to explore and experience: my aunt’s extensive vegetable and flower gardens, an ancient grape arbor, a number of outbuildings, including the big barn, several ramshackle sheds, and a spring house cut into the side of a hill, still an effective outdoor source of refrigeration. There was the wildly overgrown remains of a one-room schoolhouse that my great-grandfather had built so his children could be taught year-round. Of course there was a privy, still in use after a bathroom was added to the house in the 50s. The ever-present threat of snakes added an element of the exotic.
Why, I wonder, are my mother and my Aunt Margaret wearing identical shirts? And what am I doing with my hands?
The significance of our annual “4th up to the River” celebration is suggested by the existence of the photo above. It’s the extremely rare, posed family picture, and it’s nearly complete. Taken at the farm on July 4th, 1964, it includes my mother, her parents, her sister and three brothers, as well as four of the five siblings’ spouses. Only my Uncle Edwin’s wife, Betsy, is missing; she must have been the photographer. I’m in front with my parents, and my cousin, the son of my mother’s sister Jessie, stands in the center back. He is twelve years my senior. I don’t remember ever paying much attention to the absence of cousins about my age. I do remember enjoying the company, and the unique personalities, of everyone in this photo. As I recall, they did their best to keep me amused. Maybe I was akin to the dog who appears to consider itself a human; maybe I didn’t notice that I was the odd one out. I only know that despite my small size, I was never made to feel lesser. I was not talked down to or treated like a precious princess, it seems, but more or less as an equal. I learned to take humorous, good-hearted teasing as a compliment.
The older I get, the more I treasure my memories of those golden days with dear family up at the river. As I look back on that part of my childhood, glimpsed through the haze of decades, I feel again the abiding solace of knowing that I’m loved, knowing I belong, knowing I’m not alone. May the sacred ties of family, of friendship, and of place, beautifully entwined together to create the idea of home–may they never break, but stretch and expand. My daughter is another only child who was often surrounded by adults during her formative years. I pray that she carries with her a cache of cherished recollections that provide her with a similar sense of contentment and assurance.
Fifty-eight years after that family photo was taken, only my mother, my cousin and I remain here on earth. I pray that our future holds for us a reunion on the banks of another river, one glorious beyond imagination, in our true home.
Shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod,
with its crystal tide forever flowing by the throne of God?
Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river,
gather with the saints at the river that flows by the throne of God.
–Shall We Gather at the River
words and music by Robert Lowry, 1864
On that same July day in 1964, Aunt Dessie holds me awkwardly in her arms. I can still feel her exuberant embrace. My grandmother looks slightly miffed that we’re invading the space of her lawn chair. I’ve seen that expression on her face a hundred times. Uncle Edwin, holding his drink, smiles easily. The rolling hills of home, of central Kentucky, stretch out behind us.
This summer, the compost pile in the remains of our maple tree stump has found new life as a squash garden. No planning or intentional planting was involved. Last fall we deposited many squash seeds in the compost, and evidently squash loves compost. The decaying wood of the old tree was quickly hidden by fuzzy, thick vines sprouting large green tri-lobed leaves. Tightly curled, wiry tendrils of vine anchored themselves to the grass, gaining ground. And then the bright yellow blossoms started popping up. The last time the tree stump played host to anything this interesting, it had been a lichen extravaganza.
I wondered why most of the blossoms never bore fruit. I thought it was something to do with a deficiency or an excess in our spontaneous squash patch.
But that’s not the case. I recently learned that squash plants produce both male and female blooms. Only the female blossoms, if visited by bees carrying pollen from male plants, will develop into squash. I noticed that the bees didn’t typically flit quickly from flower to flower in the squash patch. They immersed themselves, heads down, in the depth of the blossom for long periods, seeming to luxuriate in an abundance of pollen. Sometimes two or three bees would settle in at the same flower. There seemed to be plenty of the good stuff to go around. When they finally emerged, they moved lethargically, a bit like over-served drinkers stumbling from a bar as dawn breaks. The dark form in the photo above is one such seemingly contented bee.
It’s easy to tell the difference between male and female squash blossoms. A plant produces far more male blooms than female. The males sprout from long, thin stalks in the upper parts of the plant. Female blossoms appear near the base of a thick vine. They seem to grow from a small, bulb-like proto-squash. These are partially visible in the two close-up photos above.
Two male squash blooms, one fresh, one wilting, appear in the photo above. Now that I know I won’t be sacrificing future squashes, I might try harvesting a few boy blossoms to cook. Although, maybe not, because I hate to deprive the bees.
I thought I recognized the big leaves in our squash patch. They resemble those of the acorn squash the squirrels planted among our black-eyed Susans last year. There are now two dark green acorn squash hiding under the foliage. I’m hoping they remain overlooked by local wildlife so I can let them stay on the vine to ripen for a while yet. As I’ve learned, stuffed acorn squash makes a tasty fall meal.
The photo above shows spirals of thin, pale green threads, like wire wrapped around a pencil, that sprout from the larger vines.
There were two kinds of leaves in our squash garden. From a vine with somewhat smaller foliage, there has appeared an elongated oval variety I’d simply call a pumpkin. It’s gone from white to pale yellow in the past week and is now about the size of a typical grocery store eggplant. I’m hoping to see it turn bright orange and join us for Halloween.
Of course, by that time, the compost may have something completely different in mind.
Wild Trumpet Vine is no food blog, and I’m no foodie. But I do cook regularly, and my family generally appreciates my efforts. My squash-hating husband had a business dinner the other night, so it seemed like a good opportunity to cook the acorn squash the squirrels had provided. It turned out well, and I think it merits a post.
Like my husband, I used to have a squash aversion. Growing up, winter squash was rarely served at our family table. Sautéed zucchini and yellow summer squash with onions and tomatoes was a summer stand-by, but we tended to view the winter varieties as purely decorative. Unseasoned, unsalted squash was a a staple, though, at a friend’s house. Every time I stayed for dinner, it seemed, it was on the menu. Knowing it wasn’t my favorite, my friend enjoyed squirting the mushy stuff between the gap in her teeth, pre-braces.
It’s not surprising, then, that with the exception of butternut squash for soup, I’ve avoided most of the cold-weather varieties. Until earlier this fall, I had never cooked acorn squash, nor even considered cooking it. Now I know what I’ve been missing. It’s a far remove from the bland, gooey stuff I recall from childhood. One acorn squash, sliced in half and baked, yields two perfect, scallop-edged, edible bowls that beg for some sort of filling.
Here’s how I cooked that squash:
I trimmed the ends to create a level surface, then sliced the squash in half. I drizzled the halves with olive oil, and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I put them in a glass baking dish and added about an inch of water to the bottom. I cooked the squash in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes.
While the squash was cooking, I made a simple stuffing, using what we had on hand. In a cast-iron skillet, I sautéed an onion in olive oil until not quite caramelized. I added baby bella mushrooms and bell pepper, chopped. A further exploration of the crisper drawer yielded one last zucchini and some flat-leaf parsley. I chopped and added these. For a bit of filler, I rustled up some bread crumbs from a toasted hot dog bun. (We were otherwise out of bread.) I added a little chicken broth, some sage and ground pepper and let it all simmer until the squash was done. Just before serving, I filled the squash with the stuffing mixture.
My daughter, a more adventurous eater than her father, appreciated the look and taste of the squash and its stuffing. We both enjoyed the attractive practicality of the edible bowl. It’s a remedy for erasing decades of bad squash memories. I’d like to say it might even work for my husband. But that might be going a bit too far.
Thanks again, squirrels!
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
