March 13, 2024 – Almost sugaring time. Daytime temperatures in the 40’s.
Early March is not
“sugaring” time in Vermont, yet. We’re still getting those polar vortexes and
Alberta Clippers which drop the temperature 40 degrees before you can bring in
the Brass Monkey. Surface water is frozen. You gotta watch out just walking on
the driveway. They’ll be ice fishing on Lake Bomoseen for some time yet. And,
the frost goes deep, we’re just on the 45” and 50” frost depth line. How deep
is that? Imagine a 3rd grader standing upside down.
The roots of Maple
trees go deep, way deep. They are not shallow and horizontal like the roots of
the softwood species; Spruce, Fir or Pine.
Ever pull up a
little Maple sprout? It’s got a great
long root – 3 maybe 4 inches long - like Dandy-damn-lions. Mature Maples, the
40-year-old, 40-foot tall kind, have this big tap root that puts it really into
the earth, 8 maybe 10 times further down that that frostline, really into the
living elements.
A 40-year-old
tree, 40 feet tall is maybe 1-foot in diameter. That’s the kind of tree that
the Vermont Maple Promotion Board say are the ones that are tapped in the
sugaring process. A tree-like that yields 15 – 30 gallons of sap in a season. It
takes 3 to 4 of such trees to get the 40-gallons of sap to boil down for a
gallon of Maple syrup.
That season for
sugaring starts when the sap starts running, and the sap starts running because
the Maple wants to put on foliage and then put forth seeds.
Maple trees don’t
give a flip about syrup. It’s the seed
they care about. Maple seeds are called “samara” and they are composed of two
one-seeded cells which are in a wing form so they can be carried by the wind.
That means those
very sensitive roots of the Maple tree begin a process of drawing water and
minerals from the earth and running that through its heart.
The
sap runs through a layer called the “heartwood”.
In
Vermont, this species is called Sugar Maple, the Latin name is Acer saccharine. The Heartwood is that
layer called the duramen and it is
this layer through which the sap moves. Moves? Hell, in the springtime, it’s
boiling!
In not too many weeks, when the earth rotates just a half-degree or so further, and when the wife and I are on our morning walk, we will look to the mountains to the West, and the ugly winter-grey, Maple forest will suddenly have just an impossibly light yellow-green “wash.” It’s almost time for “sugaring.”
© Copyright 2021,
Jean W. Yeager, All Rights Reserved
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