Le temps des sucres - sugartide: experiencing springtime rituals within our maple forests
As daylight savings time hit me like a truck this morning, I also clued in it's that time of year where maple sugar harvesters are watching and waiting for that famous little toc toc toc hitting their aluminium buckets in their woods. The sun stays in the sky longer, the sky turns to twilight later, and the birds are coming back. It's almost spring. Sugar making season starts as early as January in some regions, lasting into April depending on the weather. The season ends when the trees begin to bud, which renders the sap bitter.
If you have a maple tree in your backyard, even if you don't harvest sap from it, you can still honour its gifts, taste the season's sweetness, and have a localized springtime practice for your craft. Here's how!
Popular folklore and religious customs
Being out at the sugar shack took weeks to a month of watching, waiting and finally, harvesting and boiling the sap until syrup is made. So, our ancestors had lots of superstitions and sayings to help them read the weather, the environment, and the trees themselves, to time the drilling and harvesting of the sap.
-When August is rainy, we'll have a good sugar season in spring.
-If the leaves fall in September and they're dry, there won't be much sugar come spring.
-If the ground freezes in autumn before the snow covers the roots of the maples, there will not be much sap in the following spring.
-If the day is somber and cloudy on Saint Mathias's Day (February 24), spring will come early and the sap will flow abundantly.
-If the oiseau de sucre (the black capped chickadee) starts hanging out in the trees after Saint Mathias's Day, the sap should run three weeks later.
-After the snowstorm that falls on Saint Joseph's Day (March 19), it's a good time to start drilling the trees.
There's also daily sayings for how the sap will behave:
-If it freezes in the night, the maples will flow abundantly tomorrow.
-As long as there's still snow on the maple roots, the sugaring season continues.
And, let's not forget that Holy Week also plays an instrumental role in collecting the sap! Among that week, here are the following periods where you're sure to have an abundant flow:
-when the first thaw appears
-when the rivers start flowing from ice
-Holy Week itself (the only exception was Good Friday. If you drilled the maples on that day, the trees would give blood.) It was also forbidden to work at the shack on Sundays.
-Saint Mark's Day (April 25)
Sugar season would reputedly end when the snow would appear like thick flakes of salt, or when pigeons and woodpeckers start roaming around the pails. When the outardes (Canada Geese) would come back, that's a sure sign sugar season was over. Especially in the waning moon of April, it is said the sugar levels drop from the trees, and sugar season really winds down.
It was also a social expectation to leave matches and firewood, and a keg of maple syrup. This would guarantee or at least give opportunity for survival should a voyageur or wanderer come across your cabin and need sustenance and warmth to survive.
Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Côté, Bénédiction des érables, oil on canvas, 81,8 x 130,6 cm, 1914. inv. 2016.174.
Blessing of the Maples
In the 19th century, this tradition was often found in the Beauce region up until the 1930s. The local priest, with his congregation, would go to the maple woods to bless the maple with holy water. Parishioners would hold prayers under their breath or in their hearts, while methodically and slowly processing through the maples. After the blessing of the congregation and trees, a party would usually follow in the woods, with games, hot drinks and merriment.
Part of the shavings of maple wood that served to heat the hearth fires of the sugar shacks would also be used on the Holy Saturday fire to light the new fire of resurrection.
Notre-Dame des Érables (Our Lady of the Maples)
Old statues of the Virgin Mary would grace the cabin shelf, or in the niche of the wayside crosses in the Beauce region. She was reputed to keep the sugar shack from fires. Usually, she'd be holding a baby Jesus, who in turn holds a little maple leaf in his hand. While veneration to the Virgin is of course an old tradition, it's not until the 1950s that these statues would be available for the context of maple sugaring. She'd protect from bad weather that endangered sugar makers, fires, accidents from handling wood and tools. They also kept a palm frond from Holy Sunday on the sugar shack's lintel to protect it from fire. These were absolutely real dangers. Sugar makers would fall dead asleep in their bunks, and fires needed to be kept going 24/7 (you need a lot of constant heat to make syrup). It is a possibility that fire would catch, burning sugar makers inside.
Prayer to Our Lady of the Maples
"Notre secours est dans le nom du Seigneur qui a fait le ciel et la terre. Seigneur, entends ma prière et que mon cri monte jusqu'a toi. Nous avons foi en votre sainte Providence et nous savons que votre mère la Vierge Marie et son fils s'occupent de toutes les industries que vous avez répandues dans la création. Faites que ceux qui se recommandent à Notre-Dame des Érables soient exaucés."
My translation: "Our salvation is in your name oh Lord, who fashioned the earth and sky. Lord, hear my prayer and may my cry rise to meet you. We have faith in your holy Providence, and take comfort knowing your mother, the Virgin Mary, and her Son oversee all the industries and traditions that are the gift of creation. May those that are under the protection of Our Lady of the Maples have an answer to their prayers."
Sugar makers would make consecrations to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in June. All sugar makers that were part of the Association des producteurs would recite the following prayer:
"Par la chaleur et le feu du foyer, l'eau de nos érables se débarrasse de ses impuretés et devient notre délicieux sirop d'érable. N'est-ce pas aussi par la chaleur et le feu du foyer si ardent de l'amour de Votre Divin Coeur que nos pauvres coeurs, purifiés de leurs imperfections, se changeront en des coeurs que Vous aimerez davantage. Faites que notre volonté soit aussi ferme que le bois franc de nos érables, que nous respections toujours les lois de la justice et de l'honnêteté chrétienne dans notre travail et nos transactions commerciales. Soyez le Roi aimé et respecté dans nos cabanes à sucre. Nous vous promettons d'y exposer Votre image pour que toutes les 'parties de sucre' soient sous votre protection."
My translation: "By the heat of the hearth fires, the water of our maples gets rid of its impurities and becomes our delicious maple syrup. Is it not also by the heat of the hearth fires, so ardent like the love of your Sacred Heart, that our own hearts are purified or their imperfections, and transform into hearts that would reflect your Love. Make our resolve as sturdy as the wood of our maples, may we always adhere to the rule of law and Christian honesty in our trade and in our commercial undertakings. You are the most respected and loved King in our sugar shacks. We promise to keep your Holy Image hung on its walls, so that every sugar season is under your protection."
Images below: molds carved from wood from Acadie and Quebec!
Our Witchy Uses for all these lovely traditions!
-keep shavings of maple wood to light your own fires in your fireplace to start a Holy Saturday fire for your new Easter candle. You can keep a maple wood block from Lee Valley and carve it as you see fit.
-pray to Our Lady of the Maples for your springtime prayers, and meditate with her on your woodland walks.
-go snowshoeing!
-keep a spruce twig over your simmering pots when you're making and boiling sugar (for example, while making sucre à crème). Tradition has it that it keeps it from boiling over, and at the same time, blesses the mixture.
-The season abounds in ghosts, folklore and omens and portends. I'll share a few legends during this sugar season, so stay tuned!
-carve some sugar molds out of wood!
-if you have maple trees on your property, go bless them with holy water.
-keep track of the weather on those noted holy days, see if it compares to what you're seeing out there.
-any left over ashes from your fires, put them at the roots of your maple trees. Old sugar makers did this to give back to the tree.
-Enjoy a traditional sugar shack meal! Pea soup, ham, sausages, eggs. It's the only time during Lent where it was permitted, so enjoy! I'm attending one on March 22!
Sources
My source is Jean-Claude Dupont's Le temps des sucres, Les éditions GID, 2004. (https://www.leslibraires.ca/livres/temps-des-sucres-le-jean-claude-dupont-9782922668520.html?srsltid=AfmBOoozawI1U6wrw2a9iJoxzSIvXUdYRUoPnbxZi6mf-toK457AtNVA).
