Adventures of the Early Spring
This April landed me in a couple of novel scenarios, such as
drinking water directly out of a tree. Where? At a maple farm in Southern
Ontario, right during the two-or-so week window of time when the sap runs. A network of blue tubes runs between trees,
collecting the sap and bringing it downhill to be processed. Oddly, the raw sap
contains a sandy substance that must be filtered out before the sap is evaporated
into syrup. Ever eaten maple sand? I don’t recommend it. It has a gritty taste
that is either so bitter it’s sweet or so sweet it’s bitter—I couldn’t quite
tell which, but it haunts me to this day!
If tasting tree-sand wasn’t unique enough, we also had the
chance to drink the raw sap. Our host dipped a cup into an old-fashioned tin bucket hanging from a nearby tree and handed it to Yours Truly with a sweet smile. While I'm glad to say I downed it, I can't describe how weird it felt to drink straight from a tree--just a normal, wood-and-bark tree--while LOOKING at the tree. The sap looked and felt like water, but carried a ubiquitous "sweet" tinge to the taste.
No comments:
Post a Comment