Day 0
Winter isn’t ending, and the sap isn’t flowing. This is the latest it’s been since we’ve been here, and I am sure local folks who live from maple syrup are worried about what promises to be a short season.
We’ve been in Montreal the past three weeks. When we arrived last night, there was about 40 cm more snow. There is at least a meter out there – infinite white.
It’s been a long winter. Remi’s death has been a constant companion. Grief is an odd thing. It has the feel of a blanket, but also of a cool breeze. Fortunately, my friendship with Remi was so rich and pure (odd word, but really this is the closest feeling I have when I think of him) that I have no regrets. I just miss him. And of course this is the season that I have most been dreading: the seedlings, the mapleing – these were our days.
Today I planted the seedlings for the first time by myself. Thanks to beautiful seed packets from Mie’s step-mother, I have approximately 95 kinds of tomatoes planted. I promised to tone down my excessive tendencies this year. Oh well.
Tomorrow people will start to arrive. It looks like the sap might flow two days from now. We will clean on Saturday. And soon, maybe even later today, I will post pictures of the cabin, which we have loved throughout the winter, finishing the renovation job Remi and I started.
Thanks for being alongside.
Erin
Another Day 0
Sorry for the quiet, but that’s what waiting feels like. Endless. There is still so much snow – we had another few centimeters 2 nights ago and then more last night. But it’s now changed to rain, and we are expecting 11 today. We will cook.
Generally a rainy day is not a good cooking day because the atmospheric pressure makes it hard to get a hot fire going, and the sap flows much better through the warmth of a sunny day. But I suspect it will flow anyway, and yesterday the vat was 3/4 full.
It’s been slow-going – this is the latest season for decades (folks here are speaking about these temperatures being closer to what they were used to when they were young). Climate change is confusing – mostly what happens is that you can’t predict anything.
When we arrived a week ago and went up to the sugarshack, my heart fell when I realized that someone (could have been me) mistakenly left the large vat closed. This meant that we had 400 gallons of ice. I tried to stay calm, but I knew that if we didn’t break all that ice we wouldn’t have a season. I went in several times with an axe, as did both Matthew and Marc, and over 2.5 days we got it out. Nick also came with a heater and built a little hothouse around it with tarps. The group effort was beautiful, if wet. Someone who has photos should post them!
Matthew, Marc, Oana and Erica were here to boil, but they left before anything started (though we are excited to be getting Erica back when Christoph comes tonight!). Right now we are Erin and Brian, ro and Michel, Julio and Will.
One sign that it is going to flow is gutters dripping. We have no gutters at the house so I watch the front terrace for the snow melt. I look for edges. When I see that, I will go up and begin. We still haven’t quite set up the sugarshack, so this morning will be for that: getting all the tubing attached, doing a last wipe down of the vats before letting the sap in, and making the first fire.
Soon Oana, Xin Wei and family will arrive, and tomorrow Sohail, Cesar and Saehee. These will be days of turnaround – a lot of people coming for a few days. Sunday we are excited to see Morgan and Sybil, who will stay for a few weeks. And then on Wednesday, Mie and Natalie and Reza.
It’s wonderful to have so much enthusiasm for this frustrating and beautiful process!
Erin
DAY 1
What a day! Around 10 this morning I walked up to the cabin and was soon met by Michel and ro, and then Brian. We set up the evaporator, connecting it to the outdoor vat, made the three fires (1 in the cabin, two in the sugarshack), and we were off. Not surprisingly, ro and Michel are naturals. Morgan, you have found your match in ro, her attention to that 1.5 only matched by yours!
The first batch came quite quickly, mostly because we added what we had left of last year’s syrup, which means the sugar density was higher than it otherwise would have been. I think we began pulling the batch after only 5 hours, which is really quick for a first batch (the first year it took 12 hours).
Before lunch, Julio and Will came, and worked really hard with Brian to get rid of all of the detritus from the cabin renovation that was now becoming visible because of the snowmelt. It rained and rained and rained today, which was welcome (less snow!). Usually the sap doesn’t flow well in the rain but the trees had had enough too! This winter has been endless (there is still 1.5 meters of snow in the forest).
The first batch came up fast and was almost a disaster. For those who have been here, it was one of the times when the temperature just shoots up in the front pan. We had blocked the back, and when the temperature went up fast there wasn’t enough time for the cooler sap to mix with the highly dense sugar. It was really scary: for those of you who have never been here imagine not being able to turn off the stove under something very close to burning. When I get really scared, language leaves me. I was having trouble finding words for the help I needed. But eventually I managed (it was probably seconds but felt like hours) and we all rallied, getting cooler sap into the front pan, thereby making it possible for the next batch not to be wasted (if we’d thrown water in, which he had closeby, it would have made it impossible to have a new batch). That was “cosquilla.” A beautiful big batch, soft tasting with orange (ro, correct me!) aftertastes?
Then locals arrived: Dany, Nalini, Thomas. Julio and Will decided to go back to the house. We started cooking again (once my body stopped shaking from the intense stress of almost burning a pan, which would have been the end of the season because you can’t replace pans during the sugaring season – they are custom made). First Michel and ro made a small fire (while I bottled with Brian and his helpers), and then we made a hot fire. Within two hours we had another batch, no stress (almost!). “comme tu veux”.
Just as we started bottling Erica, Oana, Xin Wei and Oran arrived, and got to taste a warm new batch. This one tasted completely different. Caramel and vanilla (and a more robust aftertaste, as I recall). [I can’t taste as I am diabetic].
We called it a day. The large vat was about half full with sap still coming in (which means we will be continuing tomorrow). Unlike many maplers, we don’t continue all night (with the requisite nonstop beer drinking). So we just sat around in the cabin for a bit, enjoying the company, and then made our ways home for dinner. A beautiful beautiful day.
Thanks all!
tasting notes:
Day 2, 3 – sleet
Nick fixed the float, which meant that the levels were much easier to manage. He also made us a screen for impurities but we didn’t have time to install it.
I started the day alone, made the fires, and soon Julio and Will came to say goodbye. Then people started to arrive – Sohail, Cesar, Saehee from montreal, then Oana, Xin Wei, Michel, Oran, Erica, Brian. The cabin was buzzing – not only because I made a gluten-free Erinesque pudding chômeur (peanut butter pumpkin seed no flour bread cooked in maple syrup). You can never get enough sugar in a sugarshack!
The first batch, calibrate, was extraordinary. One of the largest batches we’ve ever made. People felt it was strong tasting, intense, with a coffee aftertaste. It was the favourite of the day. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a soft-spot for softer perishing.
Perishing came so slowly. There is always an atmospheric mid-afternoon slump, but today was really slumping. We realized why when the sleet started. And then when the batch came it also slumped. And we all slumped with it, retreating into our dinners and evening quiet.
Gorgeous people. Sweet day.
Day 4
The day started early. ro was up at the cabin, as was Oana, and they noted that the sap was coming in fast. So, earlier than I had planned (I am struggling to finish a translation), I went up. It has been an emotionally rough time for me. I miss Rémi dearly (he would have been here for everything we are doing at the moment – the mapleing, the seedlings), and it’s gotten more acute through ongoing harassment with his family. I have been mostly keeping it to myself (what is there to say, except that it’s hateful and extremely exhausting, and that it makes me feel doubly sad that he died of heartbreak at their actions), and wasn’t sure there was a day of mapleing in me. But when you walk up the hill toward the cabin, and see the two buildings on the bottom of the sugar maple mountain – the cabin and sugarshack), they beckon with such welcome that it’s hard not to put all other worries aside. When the houses are also full of kind, warm, brilliant collaborators, a day can be fashioned.
ro had already started the fires in the cabin and the sugarshack (the small stove) and unbeknownst to me (because I rarely look at a device when I am not in our house), pictures of the flood. What had happened is that we left the tap open to the large vat and overnight sap had pushed in (despite our well-adjusted float), filled the back pan and spilled all over the floor. A new problem! Every day brings a surprise problem we hadn’t prepared for.
Maryse, a neighbour, Erica, Anoush and I took out the extra sap in buckets (which we later fed back into the evaporator, as its levels got low) while ro calibrated the thermometers. About an hour later we were going.
The first batch, patch, was, like all batches yesterday, recalcitrant. The weather was crazy: hail then snow then rain then sun then rain then a snow storm. When the pressure is low, the fire feels damper (it has a heavy feeling, and the steam is more dense). This slows the process down. What became patch was named for a moment of sun-patch in the sky.
Patch was, unanimously, a typical maple syrup. Perfect and slightly undistinguished, as typical is. It will be appreciated for being exactly what it should be. But with all the neurodiverse creatures around, you can understand that there was a tinge of… disappointment? No, that’s far too strong. It was completely delicious and a gorgeous big batch. But the twinge of difference is prized here.
The second batch was sloooooooow. It always feels like it should come fast after the first one, since the sap close to what we pulled was quite transformed. But yesterday it just lagged and lagged. I must have said 10 times that I thought this was the last fire. And then it wasn’t. And it wasn’t.
But we had such beautiful company – Sybil and Morgan had arrived, and Oana and later Michel – and the feel of the environment was so warm, that we soldiered on. The weight of my grief was lifting, and it was wonderful to hear the strong women around me emphasize that no defamation suit could take me down (they are wanting to sue me for Unsettled).
Duration eventually emerged, as it does. It seemed like a very small batch when we pulled it, but actually it was quite good, more than average. It ended so suddenly, though, that it seemed like we could pull another one quickly (the fallacy). The fire had gone down suddenly and we’d lost heat. So I had ro bottle (first time anyone other than me has bottled) and Erica and I took care of the fire. But again I was wrong.
It wasn’t one fire. I stopped counting after believing too often that we were now working with the last fire. Dany, Nalini and Thomas arrived, and intense discussions about direct action were happening while Erica was convincing us that elan vital was coming. Brian called it, saying it was all over, trying to be the goddess of anarchy, but Erica looked up at him and said NO! Belief!
Belief did come just at that cusp when it was being most strained. I want to say belief is the best ever (Duration was said to be very sweet, a simpleton!, though ro disagreed with the derogatory name!) but I don’t remember what people said about it! By then we’d been boiling for almost 12 hours.
Exhausted, we made our ways home, lifted by a weathery day.
tasting notes:
Duration: so, before the spoon came to the tongue, the words simpleton had spilled into the sugary shack. this tongue is differing (without begging for this swerve). Not at all. a modest yet irrefutable refined delicacy waits in the curtain, pausing on her modes for entry, sure of potentials and possibilities, and discerning the conditions for coming into themselves. Duration sparked thoughts on how not only do taste sensations change from initial heats to the next day’s cools, but that in those first 12 hours (and thereafter in slower paces, perhaps) a taste is still coming into themselves, still composing. Duration: the thicks of intensities layering, tentative becomings, kindling complexities.
Belief: buttery buttery beginnings, spritely sugar tones dance the middle hillock, making sure you’re awake! and then, YES! mineral hues lake the whole event, mineral mineral mineral cradle the afterimage – bliss. Belief. Her lights carrying gold.
More on patch to come!
the next day of the next day
I’ve lost track of time. There was a day 4 and then some cold days and then a warmer day and then today. So it’s technically day 5, but really it’s day more-than 5.
We have had some cold days – and have taken advantage of that time to remember this is a writing residency. Mie reminded us when she arrived yesterday, resetting the tone. We missed you Mie! Natalie also came and we are excited she will be here for 2 weeks. Very sadly, Morgan and Sybil leave tomorrow. It’s gone by so fast…
It’s a blur. Monday we cleaned – I do remember that. And then I guess we recovered for a few days.
I knew today would be a big day. There has been a turn in weather – in some places you can even see the earth! Oana sent me a picture of the vat around 6:30 and it was almost full. I was there by 7, and Oana had already started a fire in the small stove. We were out of the split wood (we split the harwood into smaller pieces for the high fires toward the end) so I spent a few hours doing that and tending the first fires. Then ro, Sybil, Morgan and Oana came, followed by Mie, Michel, Natalie and Erica. Brian arrived just as the first batch was coming. He had been cleaning last year’s bottles – a thankless task. We also had a gorgeous visit from Mario, who is working on next year’s firewood and came to have lunch with us.
“Byplace Lullabies” is a beautiful, full-bodied batch. I can never remember the details, since I can’t taste it, but what I can say is that it was embued with the beautiful out-loud reading of Sybil and Morgan’s gorgeous piece on byplaces. It’s really a startling work – so precise and careful and lyrical and philosophically rich. All about the sites that emerge vaguely for life to wander through them and be born through them. The brambles are present in that batch, at least speculatively. As is the lullaby of being read to.
Is it the magic of the conviviality? We have become pros. Erica is a fire wizard, passing the logs with grace. Michel is good too, but never quite as good as Erica 😉 ro dreams of râche-restaurants, brings us vivid taste descriptions and has become a diviner (almost as good as Brian!) of the block-technique. Morgan knows her place at the evaporator, keeping us at 1.5, while Sybil moves into whatever post we most need, attuned, as are Natalie and Michel, to whatever needs to be done. Poor Oana had a long long day of student critiques.
What stands out is the ease. Truly there is a completely different quality to the process as compared with past years. We have honed techniques, and they are easier to share and tweak. We also have such an attuned group, and it really helps that people have stayed for several batches – the dance is seamless. It’s hard to believe.
Batch two came within two and a half hours. “For once it was” was up and down, as second batches tend to be, but also decisive and firm. She tastes strong and sweet with a bite, if I am remembering correctly.
It’s rare that we do a third batch, but on what became a 12 hour day, it felt possible. “Vertigo” came more easily than those late afternoon batches usually do. She is softer, more buttery, than the earlier batches, and I believe has orange overtones. Each of the three batches was enormous – we really are finding our stride.
It was a magical day. I miss Remi dearly, but the absence was beautifully held today. I felt him come in and out several times. I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by such otherworldly forces. Thanks all!
some photos Oana took~
