As winter fades and the first hints of spring emerge, our stitching journey takes us to a place of sweet anticipation. Get ready to explore the enchanting world of a Maple Sugar Bush and the rustic charm of a Sugar Shack in our pattern for March.
Now I know that not everyone lives in a climate or part of the world that gets to experience the world of Maple Syrup making. But for my family this is a huge tradition and I whenever I mention it to coworkers in the city or friends and family from other parts of the country or world, there is so much curiosity about the process and experience of producing maple syrup. So I thought I would share a bit about my families syrup making tradition.
Syrup Making While Growing Up
Both my husband and I grew up in rural Eastern Ontario in the Ottawa Valley and down just about every country back road you can find a maple forest and sugar shack hiding out waiting for spring when the sap starts to run. While my family didn’t produce maple syrup ourselves, my best friend at the neighboring farm did and I often got to experience collecting the sap from the buckets hung around the forest and stoking the fire under the large pans to boil the sap down. Real maple syrup was regularly stocked in our pantry and pancakes and waffles were enjoyed on weekends all year round.
Syrup Making Now
These days, my husband is the king of syrup in our household and between late February and early April the weekends are filled with the smell of boiling sap, wood smoke from the ever burning outdoor fire, maple syrup and fresh pancakes. As soon as the days become warm enough to be above freezing and the nights remain in the minus’, my husband will take the kids out with him to wander the forest around our house and tap all the best sugar maples. Every day when the kids arrive home from school they excitedly race around to see how much sap has been dripping for the day and to help collect it into larger gallon pails. Like me and my best friends as children, they laugh and giggle during the collection as they take turns letting the sap drip directly onto their tongues.
Over the weekend we spend at at least on 14 to 16 hour day boiling down all the sap we collected in the last week. The outside fire is started early in the morning and the sap buckets pulled out of cold storage. The sap is filtered to make sure there is no dirt or bugs in it and then boiled down in large wide pans over the fire. The kids love to help keep the fire stoked and going and monitoring the sap to make sure it doesn’t boil over. As the day progresses you can start to smell the sweet scent of syrup mixed with the smell of wood smoke in the yard.
Once the sap is boiled down and close to becoming syrup, we transfer it to a large pot and finish it over the stove in the kitchen. It’s careful and precise work to make sure it isn’t finished too soon and doesn’t over boil and burn. We test it using a hydrometer to test the sugar content once we think it’s close and then store it in sterilized canning jars for use all year round.
At least once a season we take a small pot of the syrup and carefully boil it down even further until it very think. Then the kids pack a tray with clean fresh snow and poor lines of syrup in the snow. It hardens fast and if you are quick you can use a popsicle stick or spoon to wrap it up and enjoy a treat of fresh maple syrup toffee.
We are far from a large operation, although sugar bush restaurants and tours are readily available around the area and pull huge numbers of tourists from the city eager to learn how syrup is made and to taste it fresh at the local pancake houses. These large operations have intricate lines that run from tree to tree and allow the syrup to collect in large vats that then fill huge industrial sized pans for boiling down. They tend to produce thousands of liters of syrup each season. If you live in an area that produces syrup I highly recommend a visit to your local sugar bush to experience the process yourself!
For our family, we are content with our tiny operation that produces enough to our family and friends each season. We don’t have any fancy equipment and our syrup has a more smokey flavour because it is boiled down over an open wood fire. But the experience and excitement of collecting and boiling down the sap never seems to fade as the years pass. And enjoying the product of all the hours of effort over the rest of the year brings a sense of pride and accomplishment to my kids. They love having people visit and being able to offer them a jar of maple syrup we made ourselves.
When I sat down to think about what the month of March meant to me, maple syrup season was the first thing that comes to my mind. I wanted to capture a bit of the rustic charm of the sugar bush and sugar shacks that are scattered across the region and to get to share a bit of the joy and excitement that we feel each winter when the first buckets start to appear in the woods.
Final Thoughts
Let the magic of a Maple Sugar Bush and the coziness of a Sugar Shack infuse your stitching with the spirit of spring. Sign up for the newsletter to get the pattern, gather your threads, and savor the joy of creating a piece that celebrates the sweet moments nature has to offer.
Happy Stitching,
Jeannie
Thyme for Stitching
