Maple sugaring is one of the trickiest agricultural endeavors – while the trees grow all year around, sweet maple sap flows only under certain weather conditions. Some years those conditions last for weeks and there’s a bumper crop of maple syrup. Other years it doesn’t happen at all. And, sometimes, it comes and goes so fast you have to scurry up to the New Hampshire mountains to get your share of the maple sugaring experience.
Linda and I experienced maple sugaring up close and personal at The Rocks Estate, on the north side of the White Mountains. There, weather cooperating, the maple sap flows in March and April, the quiet part of the year, when the skiers have shooshed back to their springtime haunts, and the summer vacationers have yet to migrate northward.
The Rocks Estate was once the home of John Glessner, the founder of International Harvester. In 1882 the whole region had been treeless hills, but as iron-making and farming moved to the Midwest, the trees of New England had a chance to regrow. Today, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests manages over 1000 heavily-wooded acres, including an extensive maple grove.
This maple grove, called a “sugar bush” by those who are knowledgeable in ways of Maple syrup, is the key to the Rock’s new attraction – Maple Sugaring.
Just about anyone in New Hampshire who had easy access to maple trees makes a little maple syrup for their own use – at $50 a gallon retail, why not? But for the rest of the world, maple sugaring is a bit of Currier and Ives folk history that the dedicated educators at the Rocks help visitors recreate and learn first hand.
The program begins with a video where we learn about the history of maple sugaring. According to Native American oral traditions, as well as archaeological evidence, maple tree sap was being processed for its sugar content long before Europeans arrived in the region. Native Americans showed the arriving colonists how to tap the trunks of certain types of maple tree during the end-of-winter/early-spring thaw, harvest the sap, and boil it to evaporate some of the water. This activity quickly became an integral part of colonial life.
Typically, maple sugaring would start at the spring thaw. Sugarers would begin by boring holes in the trunks of the maples, usually more than one hole per large tree, insert spouts into the holes, and then hang a bucket from the protruding end of each spout, to collect the sap. Sap would slowly fill the buckets, drop by drop.
Each group of visitors gets to identify a sugar maple, then bore their own hole in the maple tree and taste the sap that collects.
In the old days, the members of the sugaring party would return, to retrieve the sap that had accumulated. It would then either be transferred to larger holding vessels, typically barrels, often mounted on sledges or wagons pulled by draft animals.
Depending on conditions, a sugaring party could spend several days to several weeks engaged in these activities.
The sugar bush at the Rocks Estate is a walk or wagon-ride down the hill from the main educational buildings.
Modern Maple Sugaring
At the old sawmill, the education continues with descriptions of modern tapping using tubing, and modern evaporation methods. The syrup is boiled until it reaches the correct density of maple syrup, 11 pounds per gallon, when the boiling sap reached a temperature of seven degrees F. above the boiling point of water.
The density is tested with a hydrometer. If the density is too low the syrup will not be sweet enough and the syrup will spoil. If the density is too high the syrup will crystallize in bottles.
When the syrup has reached the proper density, it is drawn off, filtered and bottled while hot.
Exploring New Hampshire
Of course, a road trip to the north side of the White Mountains is not a day trip. We spent our first night six miles away from the Rocks at the Wayside Inn.
The 175-year-old Wayside Inn has been owned for the last 30 years by Victor and Kathe Hofmann. They’ve created a place that feels like home, with cozy quilts, shelves filled with books, an elderly and comfortable dog, and a couple of cats that love showing guests to their rooms.
Our room had a claw-footed bathtub that we just had to soak in after our trip from Rhode Island, and we slept with the window open, listening to the sound of water rushing over the rocks in the Ammonoosuc River.
The food in the Inn’s Riverside Restaurant is perfect for the country inn atmosphere with meat-and-potato selections that would be well at home in a well-to-do farmhouse. Simple plating and side dishes make a fancy meal of roasted duck breast with a blood orange reduction, or pork tenderloin with a mushroom hunter sauce seem familiar.
Breakfast, which comes with the room, gives a chance to taste a little of the innkeepers’ Swiss cuisine with spaetzle (a pasta-like food) or shredded potatoes as a side to eggs.
| Did You know? New Hampshire produces 90,000 gallons of maple syrup each season. Maple syrup is rich in minerals such as calcium, potassium, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, and iron. In March, over 90 NH sugarhouses open their doors to visitors. |
For our second night, we stayed at the Adair Country Inn.
This inn and its restaurant are elegant, placing a high emphasis on luxury and service. It’s across the highway from the Rocks Estate, tucked away from the main road on 200 acres of regrown woodland, making it an excellent peaceful home base for an exploration of the White Mountains. Visitors could spend their entire visit hiking, enjoying the formal gardens, or just relaxing in the spacious common areas.
Of course, the Rocks Estate, nearby Littleton and Bethlehem, and the popular White Mountains attractions all give ample reasons to wander. So if are south of the snow line and missed your own maple sugaring season, head north, it may not be too late. The folks at the Rocks Estate, Wayside Inn, and Adair Country Inn will be waiting for you.
| For more information www.thewaysideinn.com www.adairinn.com www.therocks.org |
Paul not only writes many of the articles in the pages of this magazine, he is also the publisher and editor of all of the magazines in the Amygis Publishing’s family of travel magazines. He loves exploring, traveling the back roads, experiencing the world, and finding what is unique and memorable about the places he visits.
And he loves writing – poetry, short stories, essays, non-fiction, news, and. of course, travel writing.
For over 20 years, he has shared his explorations with readers in a wide variety of outlets, from groundbreaking forays into the first stirrings of the dot-com boom to travel guides, local newspapers, and television, including Runner’s World, Travel Lady, Providence Journal, and Northstar Travel Media. He currently publishes and writes for Amygis Publishing’s magazines Jaunting, Northeast Traveler, and Rhode Island Roads.
