A highly successful Maine Maple Sunday was nearing conclusion Sunday afternoon when I stopped at the West Minot Sugar House, known as the “sweetest place in town.” That’s when I spent the better part of an hour with master sugar-maker Jim Mavor.

All day, in fascinating detail, Mavor had been explaining the operation of the company’s high-tech evaporator to scores of visitors who got an expert’s view on the “sweet science.” It was only in the few minutes before I drove away that I learned about Jim’s early years of “syruping” when he was doing it the old-fashioned way.

He recalled carrying buckets of sap hung from a yoke fashioned to go across his shoulders. He remembered doing it all on snowshoes, dumping the sap into larger containers on a sled or toboggan.

While new types of evaporators can be bought for small- or large-scale use, it’s the memories of boiling sap in pans on a wood-burning kitchen stove that will always seem to signify “real” maple syrup making.

I remember when my father first showed me how to tap a tree. With a bit and brace, he bored a hole in a large front-yard maple tree and drove a metal spile into the hole through which sap would run, one slow drop at a time.

I was maybe 8 or 10 years old, and it all seemed like an awful lot of work.

Later, I was introduced to the daily labor of collecting the sap at each tree. That could be about a dozen trees for a kitchen operation, and a hundred and more as the expectations of the enterprise increased.

It would be years before I understood the inescapable allure of making syrup.
My grandmother took care of “boiling down” the sap in those long-ago days of early spring. She used whatever pans were in the cupboard … cake pans, kettles or whatever. The different sizes meant a constant watch was needed over the process.

She moved pans forward or back on the stove-top, and added sticks of firewood as needed. She was a tiny woman, and this was no small task.

In later years, when my wife, Judy, and I were raising two daughters in our own home, my father was stepping up his game of “syruping” at the family farm. He converted a small garage near the barn where he had larger stainless steel pans that sat on the top of a small wood-burning stove. He maintained careful quality control of the product in that steam-filled garage.

Many families with access to a number of maple trees that can be tapped are still discovering the attraction of homemade syrup. In most cases, the syrup tradition runs deep, and a resident of Greene tells us the maple syrup season brings special memories of her “Papa.”

Julie (Fortin) Jipson said, “My wonderful Papa, Joseph F. Fortin, was born in St. Victor, Quebec, Canada, in 1913. He moved to Greene, Maine, in 1957 and brought with him four generations of maple tradition.”

For more than 40 years he made and sold his maple products, she said.

“Every Sunday during the season, people from all over New England would come and purchase his maple syrup, butter, sugar and the best treat of all, hot taffy on snow.”

Jipson said he passed away in March of 1998 “during the time of year he loved the most, when sugar shacks throughout Maine are making their maple syrup. When that sweet smell fills the air, it always brings back childhood memories of my dad with a big smile on his face and contagious laughter.”

She recalled how he proudly served his special treat of hot syrup on snow.

“He’s been gone for many years, but it’s during this is the time of year that he is missed the most,” she said.

Jipson’s feelings about that strong maple syrup tradition can also be found in poetry that father, Walter Sargent, wrote and published. He expressed it in lines of free verse about a farmer who told his wife, “There’s more to syrupin’ than money, Abbie.”

He wrote about the satisfaction after all that work when a jar of syrup was delivered to neighbors who had shared their trees for tapping. His poem describes how that “smackin’ gold” set their faces aglow with pleasure.

“Now that’s a profit you can see, Abbie, and it’s all tax free!”

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to davidsargent607@gmail.com.