Braiding Sweetgrass

Plink. On an afternoon in March, when the late winter sun is
starting to strengthen and moving north a degree or so each day,
the sap runs strong. Plink. The yard of our old farmhouse in Fabius,
New York, is graced with seven Maples, big ones, planted almost
two hundred years ago to shade the house. The largest tree is as
wide at its base as our picnic table is long.
When we first moved here my daughters reveled in rooting
through the loft above the old stable, a space full of the flotsam of
almost two centuries of families before us. One day I found them
playing with an entire village of little metal pup tents set up under
the trees. “They’re going camping,” they said of their various dolls
and stuffed animals, who were peeking out from under their shelter.
The loft was full of such “tents” that fit over old-time sap buckets to
keep out the rain and snow during sugaring season. When the girls
discovered what these little tents were for, of course they wanted to
make maple syrup. We scrubbed out the mouse droppings and
readied the buckets for spring.
During that first winter I read up on the whole process. We had
buckets and covers, but no spiles—the spouts you need to drive
into the tree to allow the sap out. But we live in Maple Nation and a
nearby hardware store carried all things maple sugaring. All things:
molds for forming maple sugar leaves, evaporators of every size,
miles of rubber tubing, hydrometers, kettles, filters, and jars—none
of which I could afford. But tucked away in the back they had old-
fashioned spiles, which hardly anyone wants anymore. I got a
whole box for seventyfive cents each.
Sugaring has changed over the years. Gone are the days of
emptying buckets and sledging barrels of sap through the snowy
woods. In many sugaring operations, plastic tubing runs right from
the trees to the sugar house. But there are still purists out there