Spring Maple Syrup after SHTF and a story

Welcome to spring in Wisconsin. I’m sorry about TEOTWAWKI but it’s going to be okay.

The Native American, who had separated into small family groups to ride out the winter on stores of food cooked on small fires, first came back together in spring, to tap the sugar maple for its sap. So all winter they hunkered down and stayed warm with their children and spouses. Then upon the spring they sought out their brothers and sisters to begin a more collective effort.

“The savages gather the water of the maple tree, from which they make a sugar as sweet and excellent as that of the cane.”

— The Jesuit Relations, 1634

The tree was more than a source of sweetness; it was a medicine. A mood booster! Sap, collected in birch-bark containers, could be drunk fresh as a tonic ( A tonic is something believed to restore or improve health, strength, or well-being) or like a vitamin drink.

“The clear sap was esteemed as a healing water, taken fresh in the Sugar-Making Moon to cleanse and enliven the body.”

— Recorded in early Ojibwe ethnographies by Frances Densmore, early 1900s

(Densmore’s work documents that Anishinaabe people drank fresh maple sap as a spring tonic for health and purification.)

Long is the winter, you probably know that already. When the snow starts to melt, when days consistently warm to above freezing but the night is always still frozen, tap the sugar maple and collect the sap. Slowly boiled down over open fires, it thickens into syrup, and eventually into sugar ( if you evaporate all the water) that can be stored and carried.

“Their large bark vessels, for holding the stock-water, … frequently freezes at night in sugar time; and the ice they break and cast out of the vessels. … They said … sugar did not freeze, and there was scarcely any in that ice. … I observed that after several times freezing, the water that remained in the vessel, changed its colour and became brown and very sweet.”

— Colonel James Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences … during his Captivity with the Indians

It is an easy exercise to tap into a maple for its sap, much harder exercise to identify a maple without its leaves. In the pages below I will explain how to tap the tree and how to identify a sugar maple by its leaves. This means that you would be wise to know the location of a couple sugar maples near your home. If you are one of my children, then I have identified some for you. If you are not, please consider a walk around some trees to identify a few sugar maples. It’s easy.

“When the leaves are off, the maples are known by the gray, rough bark, and the opposite branches. In the sugar season we tap such trees as we marked in summer, for it is not always easy to tell a sugar maple in winter.”

— Charles Lanman, “Adventures in the Wilderness,” 1851

This then is your first homework. Know where a couple of these magnificent gifts are growing. There are other ways to obtain sugar in the wild, but not as fun, healthy, or easy. The sweet sugar can be stored to last through the entire year to make stuff taste better or sweeter, and if you miss it, that chance is gone for the entire year..

“The maple syrup becomes thick and heavy … Once it cools … she cuts it into small squares to store as sugar cakes … So that we have syrup to use on our pancakes all year long.”

— From a Wahnapitae First Nation Ojibwe newsletter

For my children, In the pantry we have sugar. You should not be content to consume it all before deciding that maybe you should not miss out on the sugar maple opportunity. Same goes for you children of other people. You might have some sugar, however if TEOTWAWKI has arrived, if you can’t simply go to the store and buy some more sugar, then assume you will not be able to before you run out. It’s time now, go while you can. It’s easy.

“It will take forty buckets of sap to get one bucket of syrup. … And so that you will remember to appreciate this gift, it will only come once a year when the snow begins to leave.”

— As told in a story about Glooskap / Gluskonba

Good. Clearly, I’ve convinced you. This is a good idea. Don’t now go streaking into the snow naked. Boneheaded teenagers will think: “It’s warm now. I’ll be fine.” That’s when they may wander too far, get soaked crossing a muddy ditch and forget extra clothes. The truth: spring is no safer than winter unless you respect it. Seriously. FAFO. All of the security of the old system is gone. A simple injury now can kill you.

“Though the snow begins to melt, one must not be deceived by the warmth of the sun; the streams are swift, the ground slippery, and a careless step may bring great harm. The old men warn that even a small injury can become serious in the wilderness.”

— From an early 19th-century Ojibwe account recorded by Frances Densmore

Treat every trip to the sap camp like a small expedition. Pack food, water, and at least one set of dry clothes. What feels like a short walk in the morning could become a cold, dangerous ordeal by nightfall. Injury must be avoided at any cost. No goofing around. Walk. Wear shoes. If you must cut, and you must, always cut away from yourself.

“The sap-gathering was no mere amusement; each journey into the bush was treated as a serious undertaking. Men carried extra clothing, provisions, and knives, and were ever mindful of the dangers of slipping on ice or mishandling tools. One careless moment could turn the day’s work into a misfortune.”

— James Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences… during his Captivity with the Indians, 1799

The safe choice seems to be staying home, huddled by the fire, eating from the bag of field corn you carried back from up the road. No wet socks, no freezing nights at the sap camp, no risk.

But here’s the truth: staying home is not safe, it is slow death.

“Most men lead lives of quiet Maple sugar, however, was prized because it would not spoil, and it flavored otherwise plain foods of corn, beans, or dried meat. Whole camps were built around the sugaring process, with fires burning day and night, and children learning how to cut the bark, set the spiles, and tend the kettles. This was a season of hard work, but also celebration: the maple marked the turning of the year, a first sign of renewal, and the promise that fresh food would soon follow.

The sugar maple is a factory. It produces something you really want. Now you must poke a hole in its bark and hold a cup in the stream of sweet syrup!

Find and map, or memorize, the sugar maples near your home. This may one day be important information. It is much easier to find the sugar maples using the leaves as a guide, and the leaves have not yet emerged during spring sap time. We will also be noting stands of oak, walnut and hickory. More on that later.

The big maple nearest the party pavilion outside of the pool is a sugar maple and is on public property.

We also have waited out winter in our small family group at home with a small fire, just as the natives did. Now let us leave our nest and begin to thrive. I hope you and I will meet our neighbors there in the forest. Winter survivors unite! It time for some sweet tonic.

10+” diameter trees.

Tap below large branches or above large roots.

Any maple will produce sweet sap. The Sugar Maple sap is 2x sweeter. A simple hole, drilled upwards angled slightly, 2” into the tree, with a nail or twig shoved in, will guide the sap to the bucket. A drill bit is the best tool! And we have one. You will turn the bit with a manual drill, and we have that too. Garage. Guess what! I bought some maple tree syrup things that insert into the tree and guide the sap into a bucket with a tube..:::

Drill a hole as instructed, insert a straw or something to carry the sap away from the tree, and out over a bucket. Drink it raw (that’s right you don’t have to boil it, or heated up or boil it down into syrup. The sugar never expires. If the syrup develops mold (it will), scrape it off and reheat (it’s perfectly safe).

We are lucky enough that our neighbor has two or three maple sugar maples in their front yard. The house on the corner two doors down toward downtown.

At the nature preserve across the river, a trail leads up the hill. At the top of the hill you turn east and walk for just a couple of minutes maybe just one minute. The very first maple tree is on the left and is a sugar maple! Note it’s right at the edge of kind of a steep drop off…. again on the north side of the trail.

40 or 50 feet further up the trail to the east and growing on the south side of the trail by this dead tree is the second sugar maple

Here I have centered the second sugar maple in between the fork of the dead tree

And as we had hiked to the top of the hill and turned, east marched a few hundred meters and now directly on our left or the north side of the trail is a dense marsh of Sawgrass? However, on the south side of the trail is a pond surrounded by cat tail… Probably cattail camp.

Read SAP CAMP! Located at the end of the guide!

Spring at Sap Camp

Graham stretched and cracked his fingers. The small fire sputtered in the fireplace , sending little tongues of smoke wafting up the chimney. The fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in years, and the last time it was cleaned the fireplace guy said the chimney was not safe for fires and required a liner. The boys kept the fire very small.

Cole sat opposite, tearing into another slice of dense bread. The winter had been long. Endless. Day after day of reading, stoking the fire, baking and chewing the same flavorless bread had driven them nearly mad with boredom.

When the supply chain collapsed, the boys father bought as much flour as he could get. While everyone else seemed to be hoarding frozen pizza, he was getting cooking oil, salt and sugar. Honey. The boys would probably kill for a frozen pizza right about then.

“Another week of this and I’d have traded the last book for a chunk of bark,” Graham muttered, trying to smile.

Cole grinned, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Spring’s coming. You know what that means.”

Graham’s eyes lit up. “Sap camp.”

Across the river, at the county nature preserve, their refuge waited. Sap camp wasn’t fancy. A handful of small maples interspersed in a overwhelming oak forest, a lean-to for fires, and kettles for boiling sap. But after months cooped inside, it might as well have been a palace. It was a place to get wet, dirty, and alive again.

The moment the weather turned, they packed their backpacks with extra clothes, a few days’ bread, and their buckets. The river wasn’t wide, but it was enough to remind them that winter hadn’t fully loosened its grip. They crossed on the railroad tracks.

They knew it was time to start tapping maple trees when the days consistently warmed above freezing, and the nights always below freezing.

The first morning at camp, the air smelled of wet earth and the sharp tang of sap dripping from the sugar maples. Graham leaned his bucket beneath a newly tapped tree, listening to the slow, steady plink of sap landing inside. Cole worked the small manual drill to tap another tree, careful to angle the hole just right.

“Two weeks of this,” Cole said, wiping his hands on his pants, “and we might actually start to feel human again.”

They spent their days tending fires under the kettles, checking buckets, and collecting sap, sometimes leaning back on logs to watch the trees glisten with spring water.

When they weren’t at camp, they returned home only to deliver bags of syrup to a their mother or to grab a night’s sleep in their warm bed. Most nights, though, they stayed at camp, rolling out thin blankets under a tent or under the lean-to.

Spring had a rhythm, and they followed it. Morning work, midday break, late-afternoon check-ins on the sap, evenings spent stoking fires or exploring. Graham found himself laughing more than he had in months. Cole hummed under his breath while sharpening tools.

Life was still hard — food was simple, work was constant — but every drop of sap they collected was a little victory, a reminder that winter’s long this was over, at least for now.

By the end of the second week, barrels of thick, golden syrup gleamed in the corner of the lean-to. Graham and Cole stood back, arms crossed, watching the fruits of their labor. The winter lull had left them restless, but sap camp had restored their purpose, and with it, their spirits.

“Same time next year?” Graham asked.

Cole grinned, tapping the lid of a full barrel. “Damn right.”