PASSIONATE RATIONS

It’s sugar season in the Northeast.  The sap is flowing.  The sugar maples are bestowing upon humanity their particular brand of sweetness.  The sugar shacks are open for business.

If you don’t know what a sugar shack is, it’s a wooden structure, vented at the top, in which the sap of sugar maples is boiled down into maple syrup.  When in business, usually only a few weeks between February and April (though a few larger ones stay open year round), they often serve pancakes, waffles and French toast to hungry customers to showcase their wares.  The shacks smell divine—woody and sweet.

As a French-Canadian Yankee, I feel a certain historical and cultural connection to the sugarbush.  Quebec is the world’s largest producer of maple syrup, responsible for about 75% of worldwide production.  The Northeast ranks second.

I remember many occasions of eating ultra-thin crepes for dinner with butter and maple (though it may have been the man-made stuff, the real version being costlier).

Indeed, maple played a key role on my wedding day.  Not only did we give out to our guests small jars of maple syrup dressed in tulle as keepsakes, but the cake we fed too each other in the revered tradition of western-style weddings was my grandmother’s phenomenal maple spice cake.  (Stay tuned for a link to the recipe.  My low-tech index card, from which I would transcribe it, has disappeared mysteriously, to my great chagrin).

One of my earliest childhood memories involves a visit to a sugar shack.  My memory plays tricks on me here, because I swear the visit occurred in Germany, but I don’t think sugaring is a German industry.

Anyway, I could not have been more than seven.  I recall two things with clarity:  the blackened wood which formed the shack and the little white paper cup of warm syrup we got at the end of the field trip.  Given the impression it made, it must have been my first taste of the real thing.  The authentic stuff is a beautiful golden-brown hue and drinkably thin, not like the thick artificial syrups you can buy.  It is liquid candy.  Nothing compares.

If you’d like to try the experience yourself, here are two sugar shacks I know and can recommend:

North Hadley Sugar Shack
181 River Dr.
Hadley, MA 01035
(413) 585-8820

Eaton’s Sugar House
Exit 3 off of Interstate 89, left 1/2 mile, junction of Routes 14 and 107
South Royalton, VT
(802) 763-8809
(year round)

For more MA shacks, see:
Massachusetts Maple Producers Association

Eat sweet!