Gold Rush | The Sweetness of Maple Season in New Hampshire
Sweet gifts from the New Hampshire woods.
In the Chichester woods, sap boiling gets under way at Matras Maple Farm, started 20 years ago by brothers Willie and Asa Matras.
Photo Credit : Jenn BakosFrom the last days of February into the early weeks of March, when we see smoke curling above Morning Star Maple, a modest red-roofed building just east of Yankee’s offices in Dublin, New Hampshire, we know that John and Karen Keurulainen have started boiling off their maple sap—a signal that even with snow lingering in the woods, one season is losing steam and another is soon to arrive. What began more than 30 years ago as the couple’s self-described “hobby” has grown to 4,000 taps on maple trees in nearby small towns. During sugaring season they will work seemingly never-ending days collecting sap in a massive stainless steel tank, then letting heat and time evaporate the water until what remains is an amber liquid whose singular flavor has been treasured by generations stretching back to indigenous peoples.
Photo Credit : Jenn Bakos
No matter where you travel throughout the state in March, you’re likely to come across a sugarhouse with smoke rising from its chimneys—some 350 maple sugar farmers belong to the New Hampshire Maple Producers Association, and this is their defining time. Some still collect by hand in woods where metal taps drip sap into buckets; many others have set up miles of tubing that spiral like arteries through the forest, delivering sap straight to their sugarhouses, letting gravity do the work.
Photo Credit : Jenn Bakos
A number of sugarhouses open their doors to visitors during March Maple Month. Inside, you breathe an aroma found nowhere else, the elemental alchemy of boiling sap and steam. Some will offer pancakes and waffles with the freshest maple syrup possible sitting beside the table. Go ahead, pour, and ask for seconds.
Photo Credit : Jenn Bakos
There will also be syrup for sale. Take home a pint (or more) and know the sweetest gift a forest can offer. Once you do, any substitute will pale by comparison.
To find a New Hampshire sugarhouse or to learn more about March Maple Month, go to nhmapleproducers.com.
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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