Good old days

© Maria do Carmo Vieira-Montfils

versão em português

version en français

It has been so long since I live in Quebec and have been assimilated by its culture, that I can already use its motto “Je me souviens”, although the intensity of my memories here is not as extended nor as complex like that of “Québécois de souche”, obviously… I was not born here, my ancestors were not either. But we end up gluing to the tree bark and having a similar look.

At the end of February and in the beginning of March, the nostalgia from Sugar Times comes to whisper soft words in my ears and my heart is not deaf. As I drive inland through the country lanes – somewhere around here – I remember rustic sugar shacks, very rare nowadays.

The production of maple syrup is one of the first signs of spring... winter is coming to the end. The reality that we are part of the Earth is more obvious in these high latitudes. We are integrated in the rhythm of the Nature. The action begins in the maple forests, the sugar shacks are literally in full steam. The roots of the trees stretch after a long sleep and the sap begins to rise: it is new blood circulating.

Each year, the ritual of making maple syrup is renewed, an inherited Amerindian tradition much appreciated here. Today, there is a huge production by modern, industrialized systems. However, there are still a few old fashioned sugarhouses – very few. Essentially, it consists in making a hole in the trunk of the tree and put a bucket to collect the sap. Then the liquid is boiled in large containers inside the sugarhouse. By evaporation, the sap is concentrated in 100% natural syrup.

There is a typical sugarhouse vocabulary, connected to the phases of production and products – apart from syrup, we can make several treats – sweets.

In the good old days, in the weekend, families and friends met in sugarhouses for typical meals, playing accordion and singing folk songs, or simply having fun while helping to do the work. So many people who are no longer among us...

Walking in the woods during winter is not as easy as it seems, especially for someone who lives in the city and comes from a tropical country, like me. Winter clothing and boots represent a considerable burden when it comes to picking up all the water to take to the shack. When there is still a lot of snow on the ground, we do not know if the foot will sink or not, if we are walking on a broken branch, or on a rock. I found it difficult. Not having this custom, it is easy to imagine how slowly I walked and the laughter it gave rise to in people, my husband the first one. Result: I preferred to stay in the kitchen to wash the dishes. Outside, just to take pictures and breathe clean air.

The sugarhouse looks like a druid place, as if we were in a magic world, enjoying a delicious "potion" being prepared. We are involved by a sweet cloud, it smells sweet, and it tastes sweet. The sweet steam condenses at the ceiling and then we receive sweet drops on our bodies... friends and family together welcoming the spring in sweetness. In those days, when I used to go to an old sugar shack – my father-in-law's sugarhouse – the official stoker was my husband. We were the first to arrive there, very early, and the last to leave, at sunset – there was no electricity.

In these rustic places, it is the stoker who makes the maple sugarhouse warmer while the water turns into syrup. It is the stoker who works this miracle. Then, the miracles... they are endless... syrup turns into taffy, maple butter, candies... all sweetness of the world in the sugarhouse. Then... it turns into Spring!
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My pictures:
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