Sugaring Off

I made French toast for breakfast last weekend.  It was an opportunity to try the New Hampshire Maple Syrup from the Moses maples in Danbury I had received it as a Christmas gift.  It’s impossible for me to taste the sweet syrup without thinking about being a young girl and spending an afternoon at a sugaring off.

When the sap was running and the snow was beginning to melt, we would pile into the old blue Chevrolet station wagon  with Grampa Howard in the front seat, clearly in charge, for a drive to the Landaff Grange Hall.

As we walked into the hall there were several rows of long tables, covered with white paper, plates of green pickles and coffee cups. The activity at a sugaring off is in the kitchen. Looking through the door one could see a gaggle of women, dressed in pastel gingham and calico aprons trimmed with bright primary colored rickrack along the edges.

The women were either shaping the doughnuts or standing over large pots of boiling lard, ready to dip them. Raised doughnuts are made with yeast and must rise for at least an hour before being shaped. The moment they are removed from the pot they are piled onto a plate and brought to the table. Nowhere in the world can you find doughnuts that will compare to these raised doughnuts created in a country kitchen. Light fried on the outside they are moist, soft and airy on the inside.

The men, dressed in green wool pants, sweaters, and black and red hunting shirts are coming and going with pails of sap ready to be boiled down into syrup or carrying buckets of snow.

If you have never been to a sugaring off, then you might not know about sugar on snow.  Heavy “corn” snow is brought in from the deep woods, and syrup that has just been boiled down and then cooled is drizzled over it in tin pie plates.  As the syrup begins to thicken you twist it onto your fork until it forms a piece of candy that is soft and sweet. If champagne has been described like drinking stars, eating maple candy is like enjoying a little piece of heaven. At the same time, you are dipping the warm doughnuts into the hot syrup.

If this sounds like too much sugar, the bowls of sour pickles are there to absorb the sweet taste. The pickles are made by filling a glass gallon jar full of sliced cucumbers and adding one cup of canning salt, one cup of white sugar, one cup of dry mustard and then filling the jar with cider vinegar. The pickles should cure for about six weeks.

Weather is, of course, critical for the sap to run. Ideally it should be 20 degrees in the evening and at least 40 degrees during the day. The lines must be clear and not frozen so the sap will flow. When there is lots of snow, the best method of transportation to reach the trees is by wearing snowshoes.

Grampa Howard left us the recipes that were kept hanging in the kitchen held in heavy metal clip. He had typed them using his Remington typewriter and various scraps of paper. They are now yellow with age and the clip is getting rusty. Often at the end he would type, “yum, yum, yum.” The perfect words for describing a sugaring off.

March is Maple Syrup month and if you have never been to a sugaring off there are sugar shacks around the State you can visit.  This weekend treat yourself to a stack of pancakes, a plate of French toast or top vanilla ice cream with hot maple syrup and walnuts.  Who said March isn’t a special month?   In New Hampshire it’s the sweetest month of the year.