MPR’s Euan Kerr interviews Minnesota poet Susan Carol Hauser about her book “Sugartime: The Hidden Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup with a Primer for the Novice Sugarer.”

The warm days and cold nights this week are perfect for making maple syrup. "Sugaring" as it’s called, is usually done for several weeks each spring when the sap starts running, but before the trees begin to bud. Poet Susan Carol Hauser has been sugaring for twenty years now on her land in Puposky Minnesota, near Bemidji. Hauser says sugaring teaches patience.

Susan Carol Hauser spoke with Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr from our Bemidji station KNBJ.

Transcript:

(00:00:00) You have to work when the trees are ready. You can't schedule it. The temperature has to be right for the sap to flow and you just wait for the sap to come and you cook like crazy when it does so you have to be able to set aside the other parts of your life and enter this sort of calendar of the
(00:00:15) trees. You describe almost a state of mind. Which grows on you in your book. Could you tell me about that? What how does it feel as You're a few days a couple of weeks into the process.
(00:00:33) I think it's it's quite interesting. One of the things I notice is that we walk more slowly as we get into the process more at first. We're very eager and impatient and we want this app to run we tap a tree in we tap about four trees test trees and wait for the sap to start and we're getting all the pails ready in the buckets. And so we're very busy in our the same kind of way that we're busy in our regular lives. But then as the sap starts to flow and we pick sap and we cook sap we start slowing down we walk more slowly. We kind of hang around outside by the fire and we Mosey into the house and sit around and so it just the busyness of the calendar of our usual calendar sort of goes away and we get into this Rhythm of the trees and the sap and it's quite amazing and when people come out to visit as they do to help Help us with the sugaring. We see that they start walking more slowly as well and telling stories and we go in the kitchen and make candy before they go home and it's very much a community project. I think we begin to feel very tribal about the whole process.
(00:01:49) I have been amazed in the time since I have seen sugaring done the the the changes in volumes. You go out and you collect gallons and gallons and gallons of sap and then you you boil it and you cook it and you boil it and you cook it and they get smaller and smaller and smaller. That's right. Some would say that's not a lot of return.
(00:02:14) It's 40 gallons of sap to one gallon of syrup. So you have to boil away 39 gallons of water to get that one gallon of syrup. And if you want sugar or candy, you have to boil away even more water. That's how you get down to candy and sugar the Return is partly that incredibly sweet product that you can put on pancakes and popcorn and ice cream. But I think a lot of the return is the community that I mentioned because you must work with somebody it's really not something you can do alone. So you're working side by side with someone in this physical labor, which is not you don't have to be able to you know, move mountains to do this. You just have to be able to walk around and carry a bucket with five gallons of Water in it. So it's not too physically exhausting but it's very physically engaging and in a gentle way and I think that doing that with somebody else. It's like when we garden with somebody it's kind of nurturing and you know, you feel safe when you can work with the earth. I always feel like, you know, I can make it out here. I can I can live out here if I need to and I'm glad I don't need to but I think I can and and so there's that sweetness that comes from it. Also sugaring is only done in from like Minnesota over to the east coast and North into Canada a little bit. The weather has to be right in our long Springs with our up and down temperatures are what make it possible and I think after The Long Winter to be able to be outside and doing something it's too warm now to go skiing or snow shoeing the Snows gone or mushy and it's too early to do the gardens. So this is a project where you can go out and you almost feel like you're helping To bring spring along, you know as you start maybe the crows have come back and then the flickers come back and you hear their call and the Bald Eagles come back and when the frogs begin to sing that's when sugaring pretty much ends the ground has warmed up. So you're part of all those little sounds and all those little processes and that's the real sweetness that we get. I think from doing maple syrup.
(00:04:24) Who is this book form? Who do you see reading
(00:04:28) it? I think people who like to be outdoors and who do get Outdoors would enjoy the book but I think people who don't have time to get outdoors also might enjoy the book. I wrote it every morning every morning while we were shooting sugaring. I would get up and write from about 7:00 in the morning till 11:00 and then would go out and sugar with my husband the rest of the day and then in the morning I'd get up and write again. So the book has this kind of Them of being out in the Sugarbush. It's very detailed about the leaves and the birds and the sounds we hear and I think anyone who wants to sit down and sort of step out of their busy calendar for a while and step into that Circle of the trees. They might be able to do that with this book. The book also has what we call a primer for the novice sugar ER and anyone who has any kind of maple tree and a power drill can tap a tree and untap will give you enough sap over a few days to boil down and you can use an electric frying pan plugged in outside on your patio or something and you can make a little anyone can make a little maple syrup.