Town of West Bend, Wi – Predawn light is creeping into the clouded skies this early March morning as I step outside into misting rain; not enough is coming down to be considered raindrops, but it is misty enough to get me wet in a few minutes.
A barred owl is calling from the woods as I pour yesterday’s brown, boiled-down maple sap into a pot to finish inside on the stove and pour the last of yesterday’s strained raw sap into the roaster to begin the day’s boil outside
Crows are shouting to each other in the woods across the road and the Sandhill cranes are beginning to make their raucous rounds of the fields around the Farmhouse.
Early morning in early spring is damp-chilly and charming and the hush surrounding the misting rain makes the birdsong seem magical and distant, as if I am the only one to hear them at this hour. Even the rooster in the coop across the way is silent right now.
When it gets light enough to make tromping through the woods safe from unexpected tripping on rocks and roots that can’t be seen, I’ll put on my boots and coat and walk through the dawn mistiness to gather the sap that dripped yesterday.
The weather is tempering a bit; it will be warmer today and for the next several days and I expect the sap to stop running. Fingers crossed that it will freeze again soon to keep the flow going for a few more weeks. We don’t tap many trees, so we depend on a good number of days of dripping to make enough syrup for the year.
I’m looking forward to a cup of hot tea and perhaps a fresh blueberry muffin when I get back. I’ll be a little wet…
All of this maple syrup making is a long-standing family endeavor at the Farmhouse and after 1929, when our little coop/shed was brought to the farm by sled and horses, the initial boiling happened in it on a coal stove in a big, metal pot that was also used at butchering time for cooking sausage.
When I was growing up, we tapped trees and cooked the sap in large pots on a kerosene stove on our back porch, hauling the raw sap from the woods before we climbed onto the school bus in the mornings. We still gather sap from some of the same trees that were used long ago when my mother was young and that we went on to tap when I was growing up.
So why do we take on that hard work of tapping, collecting, hauling, hauling, hauling, boiling, and finishing off the syrup in the kitchen every spring? Of course there’s something charming and exciting about… Click HERE to read the rest of the story from Century Farmhouse.
Don’t forget about the spring Soap Making Retreats on Saturday, March 28, 2026. Click HERE for details.
