Each March, the Natick Community Organic Farm ("NCOF") holds an annual pancake breakfast and sugaring tours for a small donation to support the farm. This year, it was scheduled for March 5th. Visions of Tasha Tudor's illustrations from A Time to Keep, one of my favorite children's books, danced through my head. I woke up early this morning to rain and gray skies, but hold on to your breeches, it was 51 degrees outside! Holy cow, Mother Nature's warming up a bit.
I was out the door by 9:00 and hit the farmers market on my way there. I decided to skip the pancake breakfast to avoid the crowds and headed straight to the barn to sign up for the tour. The next available tour was an hour out, so I had time to explore the grounds a bit.
Just a little bit of history, the Natick Community Organic Farm has been on this property since the colonists first established the town. (It was originally a family farm.) The current barn structure dates from 1815. As you can see from the sign above, the Natick School District purchased the farm in the 1960's. In fact, the Natick Memorial Elementary School is across the dirt road and is where the annual pancake breakfast takes place. As of 2009, the farm is now protected as conservation land. They have an executive director named Linda (see pictures below). She has been with the NCOF for 31 years and loves what she does!
They survive with the support of volunteers, donations and fundraisers, and local community education and school programs. They have several sheep, two cows, a few goats, hutches of bunnies, gaggles of chickens and a very pregnant pig ready to give birth anyday now. See the photo montages of all the cute little animals below...
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| Now that's some pig! |
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| I just thought this was funny... |
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| A flock of happy clucking chickens |
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| Four new lambs born in the last two days...two black and two white. These two were hungry. The others were sleeping. |
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| This is Hoof |
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| and the honey colored cow is called Big Eye. |
The tour began at 11:30 and we were off. The original drive of the property was lined with sugar maples, all about 90 years old. These are the pride of the NCOF and the source of the sap that was being cooked in the sugar shack just up the lane. Apparently, sugar maples need to be at least 40 years old before they are mature enough to be tapped--and really, at that age, they can only support one bucket.
March provides the best climate for tapping as it requires temperature fluctuations of 40's during the day to freezing temperatures during the nights. This swing causes the sap to come up from the roots during the day and back down at night. The few trees they've tapped so far were just tapped a couple days ago. It takes about a full day to fill the buckets. I tasted the clear liquor that comes out of the tap and it didn't really have much flavor to it at all. Actually, it's only about 3% sugar and the rest is water.
So, in order to render that sweet caramel colored heavenliness we pour on our breakfasts, it takes hours and hours and hours of cooking over a very hot fire. We learned the Native Americans would hollow out birch trees and fill them with the sap. They would heat stones in a fire and then place them in the liquid to cook off the water. Steamy business!
The colonists brought over other technology (a la pots and spits) and would boil their sap over these fires for days, keeping constant watch over the fires to make sure that everything continued boiling. Suffice it to say, sugaring to create maple syrup is a lot of work! In order to create a gallon of maple syrup, it requires about 30-40 gallons of maple sap. These trees will keep producing until the evening temperatures remain above the freezing mark...so another month or so.
One major difference between the native method and the colonial method is the result. Still to this day, we Americans cook the sap down to a point where it's about 1/3 water and 2/3 sugar. The native result was 100% sugar. They would continue to cook the sap down until no water remained. They did this mainly for preservation purposes. Mixed with dried berries, smoked meat and ground down with the maple sugar, it was stored in leather pouches and called pemmican. Of course, we know Pemmican today as a tobacco brand, but it's original purpose was as an old school power bar, so to speak.
We were finally on our way down to the sugar shack and to meet Linda, the "Queen of Maple Sugaring" according to our tour guide. Before we headed inside, a volunteer was pouring another 10 gallons of sap into the tank connected to the bath inside the sugar shack.
Inside the sugar shack, it was warm and a bit tropical. The bath in the center of this small room was at full boil and it smelled slightly nutty and sweet...sort of like those nut vendors selling roasted cashews or almonds in the city.
The bath is split into two sections. The larger section, closer to you in the picture, is where most of the evaporation occurs. There are flues in the tub that act as the conduit for the heat from fire. There is some serious boiling go on here! The second section is the finisher, where the magic starts to happen. It has a flat bottom directly over the fire.
Here's Linda, testing the liquid to see if it's ready yet. She's using a hydrometer which tests the specific gravity of the syrup to see if it's ready. (If you've made home-brewed beer, you know what this little gizmo is.) We weren't quite there yet. It still had to come up one more degree, to 219 degrees and then it could be bottled. This is a lot like making candy! Very scientific and very precise.
Of course, they do sell their syrup in varying quantities...even by the gallon! Linda has been cooking almost non-stop since Thursday in preparation of the pancake breakfast. She's in here at 5:00 and doesn't leave until 11:00 at night. They dampen the fire and get the hot coals going again the next morning, and they're off yet again. They will be sugaring as long as the trees continue to produce. Last year was their best year, with a production of over 340 gallons of maple syrup.
I asked her what the real difference was with the grades and she said that it comes down to the trees. The lighter the syrup, the less sugar present in the sap. She said she should have some of this season's syrup for sale in the next couple days. I can't wait to go back and buy some! I might have to sign up for a class or two as well. If you're in the area, come and check it out.
Natick Community Organic Farm
117 Eliot Street
Natick, MA 01760
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| Me and my clogs getting dirty... |
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