The Secret Ingredient

by Lisa W. Roesing of South Russell, OH

Pa said “Hey Lis, listen to this…” I hold my breath and listen. He had done this before and if I didn’t listen real close I’d miss it. Tears welled up in my eyes as I heard… plink, plink, plink coming through my LG cell phone. Pa had been out tappin’ and if he hadn’t told me, I would have never guessed that the sound I was hearing was sap hitting the bottom of a galvanized bucket. In those few moments, I picture Pa driving his drill into a maple. The first smell I got was slightly musty. It was from the tree bark that had been rubbed off from Pa’s stiff work gloves. Then a fresh sweet smell of new wood engulfed my senses, like walking into a house under construction or by driving past Hancock Lumber. Pa pounds the spigot into the maple, the crack of his hammer echoes throughout the woods. I can almost feel the release as the maple lets its sap down. Pa quickly puts the galvanized bucket on the spigot and plink, plink, plink the sap is collected. This is what I saw through my tears as I sat in my living room in South Russell, Ohio and my Pa was tapping maple trees in Harrison, Maine.

As a child, I gaze up the hill from the north window of my childhood home. I see the unmistakable steam rising from Gram and Papa’s door yard. I run downstairs to get on my rubber boots and a light spring jacket. I scoot out the door and run up the hill, my rubber boots slapping against my bare calves as my socks are already bunched up in the toes of my boots. Papa is sitting in front of the evaporator in a lawn chair. His cigarette dangles from his lips and he is holding a giant James Michener book. I get as close as I can to the warm boiling sap, but not close enough to have Papa tell me to stand back. I know it’s hot, I’ve been told this for as long as I can remember. I smile at Papa as he puts down his book and starts to stoke the fire underneath. I wonder how he knows to keep just enough wood burning so that the sap won’t boil over. I inhale deeply, acrid smoke fills my lungs and I cough. Behind the smell of wood and cigarette smoke is the sweet smell of evaporating maple sap. Papa’s shaky hands pick up his book again as he eases his lean tall body back into the aluminum chair. I watch as the ashes from the freshly kindled fire drift down into the boiling sap. Pa told me that this adds flavor. I really didn’t believe him, but I do have to admit that his maple syrup was some of the best (and darkest) that was ever made. I trot up the porch and enter Grams kitchen. She’s in a huff, because once again Papa will be boiling off the syrup in her kitchen. She’s placed the finishing pan on her gas stove and has the sterilized jars lined up on her table, with various filters, strainers, the hydrometer and other implements for finishing maple syrup. I keep quiet as she bustles around her kitchen and Papa comes in asking her if she is ready. I swear fifteen years later she still has a sticky film on her walls and ceiling from finishing off syrup in her kitchen.

In later years Uncle Harm built us a sap house, with a stove in it for finishing the syrup. So there wasn’t a need to take it into Grammies house anymore. It had special wooden trap doors in the roof to let out the steam. One would pull a rope to close them and use a great long piece of wood to shove them open. I loved to open them and close them and sometimes slam them, sending smoke signals to the Indian on the Maple Ridge! Most of the steam billowed out through these, but not all of it. The walls, windows and everything inside was moist, warm, and sticky.

The giant bulk tank had its own table in the sap house. We siphoned the sap from our collecting barrels into this. It always seemed that the bulk tank was Pa’s nemesis. One year he had gotten so frustrated with patching and soldering holes in it he rolled the great big round tank out to the top of the hill. It didn’t sit there for long. I’m not sure what Pa’s intentions for it were but Jeff and I saw it as an opportunity for fun. We set it up on its edge and both of us stood in it with our legs spread and arms over our heads (like preparing for a cartwheel). I really don’t know what we were thinking because our hands didn’t touch the top, but we thought we would roll down the hill. We must have looked like Wylie Coyote trying to catch the Road Runner. It didn’t work quite the way we envisioned, in fact we both ended up with a lot of bruises and cuts, but man did we laugh. Once we got it and ourselves to the bottom of the hill we came up with another ingenious idea. We rolled it to the little man-made pond that Pa built. We paddled around in it for hours, mostly going really fast in circles until those holes that Pa had tried to mend became all too apparent. I think that bulk tank still sits at the bottom of that pond.

Sugaring time has always been a big part of my life, even when it doesn’t get done. There are years when the sap house sits quiet and lonely and the trees do not get tapped. A funny feeling still comes over me though. I can honestly feel the sap running, I can feel it in my veins. It’s like uneasiness: other people may call it spring fever or cabin fever, but I know what it really is. It’s sugaring time. I wish I was there with my Pa helping with the collecting or boiling or whatever. I feel like I am that empty sap house that sits quiet and lonely, not to be used this spring or that sugar maple about to burst open. Then I receive a call, and Pa says “Hey Lis, listen to this…” and I hold my breath and I’m there. I am the sap that he collects; I am the beat of the horses hooves; I am the mud and snow; I am the steam floating through the trap doors; I am the smell of Papa’s cigarette still lingering in the sap house walls; I am the dollop of cream that keeps the sap from boiling over. I am part of the love that goes into maple syrup at High View Farm. Maybe that’s what makes it taste so good.