Mother Earths New Year

Traditional Anishinabe see the first sap run in the sugar maple as the beginning of the New Year –a renewal and covenant with life after a harsh winter in the northland. It is a special time for one who has worked his sugar bush. Being out in a stand of northern hardwoods after a tough northern Minnesota winter, one is cognizant of an awakening in the earth and pleased to see the arrival of another season and opportunity to make the most enjoyable natural sugar known to us in the northland. The first taste of maple syrup, done over a wood burning evaporator is truly something to savor. Even an old white man like me gives thanks to Muzzu-kummik-quae (Mother Earth) for this gift.

Generally in northern Minnesota, the first taps go out sometime in March and by early April the taps begin to run good. My stand of maples are mixed within a diverse group of other northern hardwoods and the real work of collecting sap and boiling it down begins in April but the unusual early spring this year moved the sap run up by three weeks.

The first sap to run has lower sugar content. The sugar content or water ratio to sugar increase as the season advances. The first sap is around 50 to 1, water to sugar. As the season progresses, the content of sugar rises to around 28 to 1 and then diminishes as the season tails off. The highest sugar content that I have experienced was in 2007 when it peaked at 22 to 1. This ratio may seem incredibly low but the sugar maple has the highest concentration of sugar of any tree known to man.

What causes this? It begins with the onset of winter which stops the sap flow. Left standing in the trunk of the tree, sugar and other minerals from the surrounding wood become dissolved in the sap. The process of sap dissolving sugar and other nutrients is temporary hence the limited time span of the sugar season. Springtime’s warm and sunny days combined with frosty nights, act as a pump to raise stored nutrients from the roots and get the sap moving. If the temperatures stay above freezing or below freezing around the clock, the sap will not flow adequately.

The natural and unprocessed sugar provided by this magnificent tree not only yields the sweetness of our land but contains high quantities of minerals, trace elements, and amino acids. Besides an addition to our physical health, the trees leafs that display brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges in the autumn, enrich the soil with lime upon decomposition, further enriching the earth for other lime loving plants and micro organisms. The prolific and abundant seed production provide a valuable food source for deer, bear, squirrels, mice, birds, and a host of other animal life. The finished wood from this tree is very hard and exceedingly beautiful.

The sugar maple represents a true hardwood climax forest, surviving long periods as seedlings under the shade of oaks or other hardwoods, waiting for an opening in the canopy to develop, which allows them to shoot for the sky and form wide spreading crowns. Once the canopy is composed of mature sugar maples, they will form the densest of canopies, where only their own seedlings will survive below.

Tapping trees needs to be done with some thought and concern. Tapping a sugar maple can remove fifteen percent of the stored carbohydrate reserves – it doesn’t do the tree any good. Think of it as a person giving blood. Maples are also particularly vulnerable to soil compact and air pollution. Trees that are too small – less than 12inches at chest height -should not be tapped nor should larger trees have excessive taps applied.

We are fortunate in north-central Minnesota to be at the northern limit of the sugar maple. They do not grow where the temperatures regularly dip below forty degrees below zero. Most of my trees show frost cracks, the result of these frigid cold nights.

Any tree of the maple family will yield sap with sugar; red maple, silver maple, and box elder. Birch and basswood are also tapped but the sugar content of all the above mentioned is far lower than the sugar maple. Some have an 80 or 90 to 1 ratio and do not match the wonderful maple flavor.

As the season of the sugar bush comes to an end, I am grateful to the Ojibway for handing down this tradition and have developed a higher appreciation of the sugar maple and it saddens me to read of maple tree decline in the east where pollution and climate change are the reasons given.

“Every tree like every man must decide for itself --- will it live in the alluring forest and struggle to the top where alone is sunlight or give up the fight and content itself with the shade.” Ernest Thompson Seton