Sugaring-off season can be a very social time, but one part of the job is profoundly solitary: boiling the sap. Our daughter and son had helped with the heavy part of the job: collecting the sap from 45 buckets hung from sugar maple trees. Still, maple syrup season has remained a sacred time for me, when we celebrate the return of the lightI grew up on a farm in western Quebec. Still, maple syrup season has remained a sacred time for me, when we celebrate the return of the light, the rising of the sap and, more fundamentally, the health and bounty of our land. Until then, please buy some maple syrup next time you go to the store, to help out those syrup makers isolated alongside their evaporators to bring you the sweet taste of spring.

Source: National Post April 05, 2020 16:29 UTC