Seasons

Sugaring: Vermont's Fifth Season

Humorists maintain that Vermont has only two seasons, winter and a month of poor sledding. Real Vermonters recognise sugaring as a fifth season in its own right — and it is what makes the state the largest producer of pure maple syrup in the United States.

Why the sap runs

Sugaring season falls between winter and spring, and it begins when winds out of the south push daytime temperatures well above freezing while the frozen, snow-packed ground and the general arctic disposition of a New England March plunge them back below thirty-two degrees at night. That alternation is the whole mechanism. The freeze-thaw cycle drives sap — a watery liquid, usually two to three per cent natural sugar — from the roots of the sugar maple up toward the buds waiting at the end of every branch.

The same cycle that starts the sap is the cycle that destroys the dirt roads, which is why sugaring and mud season arrive together. See the climate page.

Central Vermont sits in the heart of the great Northern Forest that runs from the Adirondacks of New York across to Maine, and this is where the region's most traditional occupation is practised: the tapping of mature maples to gather about forty gallons of sap, to be boiled over a wood fire, to obtain a single gallon of pure Vermont maple syrup.

The work

Tapping starts as soon as the forecast looks right — often in the last week of February, more usually in early March. A tap hole is drilled into the trunk of a mature tree, a spout set, and the sap collected either in the traditional hanging bucket or, in most commercial operations now, through a network of plastic tubing that runs downhill under vacuum to a collection tank.

The sap should be boiled within a day or so of collection for the best flavour, which is why sugarhouses run around the clock during a good run. In the evaporator, sap flows through a series of channelled pans over a wood or oil fire and gives up its water as steam — which is what produces the plume from the cupola that tells you, from half a mile away, that someone is boiling. Roughly thirty-nine gallons of water leaves as steam for every gallon of syrup that comes off. The finished syrup is drawn off at a precise density, filtered, graded and packed hot.

During Vermont's fifth season — usually late March into early April — you do not have to drive many miles on any road before you come across a steamy sugar shack. Families boil sap in the kitchen or on a hobby rig in the yard; commercial sugar-makers large and small are hard at it night and day.

Grades

Maple syrup is graded by colour, and the colour tracks the season. All grades contain the same amount of sugar; what changes is flavour, which strengthens as the run progresses and the trees approach bud break.

The historical Vermont grades — used for generations and still heard in conversation — were Fancy or Extra Fancy for the lightest golden early syrup with the most delicate taste, Grade A Medium and Dark Amber through the middle of the season, and Grade B for the strong, dark syrup produced at the very end of the run and generally used for cooking. Most sugar-makers kept the Fancy for their own table.

Since 2014 the industry has used a single international grading system: Grade A Golden with Delicate Taste, Grade A Amber with Rich Taste, Grade A Dark with Robust Taste, and Grade A Very Dark with Strong Taste. The syrup is exactly the same; the names changed to end the impression that later, darker syrup was somehow lower quality. Grading, labelling and the rules on what may be sold as Vermont maple are administered by the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.

Sugar on snow

Most sugaring operations will take the time to serve guests the traditional treat: syrup boiled almost to the candy stage and drizzled over a mound of shaved ice or clean snow, where it sets into chewy ribbons. It is served with hot coffee, a raised doughnut and a dill pickle — the pickle to cut the sweetness, and no, nobody in Vermont finds this odd.

Visiting a sugarhouse

• Timing. Late March and early April, in most years. Watch for steam from a roof cupola: that means someone is boiling right now.
• Etiquette. Sugaring is work, and a good run does not wait. Ask before going in, keep out of the way of the person watching the pans, and do not expect a scheduled tour.
• Clothes. The yard will be mud, ice and slush in some combination. The sugarhouse itself will be hot, wet and full of steam.
• Roads. Sugarhouses are on back roads, and back roads in late March are at their worst. See mud season.

The health of the resource

Sugaring depends entirely on healthy mature sugar maples, which take forty years to reach tapping size, and on a reliable freeze-thaw spring. Both are the subject of long-term research: the maple programme at University of Vermont Extension works on forest health, sap chemistry and production practice, and the high-elevation forest monitoring on Camel's Hump produced some of the earliest North American evidence of atmospheric damage to northern hardwood and spruce stands. The sugarbush is the reason there is a fifth season at all.

For the wider industry, see Vermont products; for what to do with a gallon once you have it, see regional food.