Yesterday I learned a great new word– SAPCICLE! Friends and I were working on embracing the fact that it’s March, and instead of crocuses pushing through the Michigan ground (like they were in St. Louis a few weeks ago when I was there), there is still 10 inches of snow… And more on it’s way. Maybe if I take down the paper snowflakes in the windows and put up paper crocuses, things will change…

But, until that point when spring actually shows its face, we’re embracing the winter and what it has to teach us. I read in the paper about a maple sugar tapping demo at one of the local Metroparks, so off we went. Amidst the room full of mostly families with wee ones, the interpreter with her (forced) huge smile and purposeful, educational voice (”Hello, boys and girls, can you say the word Maple?”) led us through a pretty fascinating history of sugar maple tapping and processing. The process of condensing the sap to syrup was done (by the Ojibwe, a long time ago) not by placing it over the fire (because it was done in a hollowed out log, which would have burned in the fire), but instead by transferring hot rocks from the fire to inside the log, and back and forth and back and forth (using a deer antler) all day.

The math is astonishing– through the month of March (the season you can tap around here) one tree will yield approximately 10 gallons of sap. To make one gallon of maple syrup, it takes 40 gallons of sap… And to make ONE piece of maple candy (think smaller than an oreo cookie size), it takes 1 gallon of syrup– i.e., 40 gallons of sap! I will definitely value those little maple candies more.

After her schpiel, we headed outside– the group tromping through the snow and squinting because the sun was so bright, and the glare off the snow practically blinding (no complaints for sunshine, though). We got to watch her drill the hole, attach the bag (these days sap is collected in plastic bags with a metal rim), and start the drip. The sap tastes like sugar water, and looks as thin as water (good ol’ phloem, basically). Then we watched it being condensed over a wood fire and we tasted that pure maple syrup goodness. Yum.

As we were tasting the sap– she was pouring it from the plastic collector bag onto our fingertips– a great new (to me) word came from her mouth– sapcicle! When it’s below freezing sap, too (since it’s mainly water), freezes. I was admittedly jealous of the 7 year old who had pushed her way the front and was lucky to have been the recipient of the sapcicle that poured out of the bag– she got to suck on that frozen sweetness while the rest of us merely licked the sugar water from our cold fingers. Bitterness aside, I am very excited about this new word, and hope I can find ways to use it in conversation this week.

I also learned that you can tap birch trees, though the sugar isn’t as sweet. To me that’s sort of intriguing because maple syrup is fairly intense, and I think I might like a less-sweet version.

So, now I’m inspired. I have two sugar maples in my front yard… and the park down the street is full of them. I want to find out where I can buy tapping supplies– any ideas? In the summer, it’s guerilla gardening… But in March in Michigan, guerilla maple tapping…