About Maple Sugaring
Maple syrup is available in different grades, all of equal sweetness
and density.
- Vermont Fancy Grade: Golden syrup with the classic
maple bouquet. Shines on vanilla ice cream.
- Grade A Medium Amber: Warm in hue, hearty and yummy.
The maple bouquet tinged with caramel. Delicious all-purpose syrup.
- Grade A Dark Amber:Tastes rich – at once maply
and caramelly.
- Grade B: Nearly identical to Grade A Dark Amber in flavor, but a bit darker
in color. These two dark grades are traditionally used in baking.
Maple Links (from the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers web site):
Other Maple Links:
Maple Prose Poems:
- Guilt Syrup (PDF)
- Gravity is a Form of Love
Deep in hardwoods above Nebraska Valley I crouch on a rock by the edge of Falls Brook. Birch saplings arch over a black pool once hidden by the logs - long
since washed away - of a logger’s bridge. One by one, in no particular
hurry, their leaves spiral downward. Already a herd of pale gold wafers circle
lazily on the dark water, drifting counter-clockwise in a clockwise world.
It is early fall and these leaves are the pioneers, the forerunners.
The masses shall follow some other day. Water spilling hastily from a higher
pool nudges each new arrival toward the herd. Dead to the trees but alive
to me, they are bits of sunshine, so youthful and sporty beside the stock-still
rocks.
Most leaves come to rest on the land where they may be rustled by animals
or the wind before merging gently with the earth. What greater adventure
awaits the lucky few alighting on the brook, born again to the uncertain
life of the water traveller!
Yesterday’s leaves lie crowded into a rusty mat against a dam of
middle-sized rocks. One day high water will release them. How many waterfalls
will they catch before chewed to dust? How will they take the corners?
I
pick up a golden leaf and flick it onto the water, downstream of the pool,
where the brook runs swiftly. On it I lay a single, unutterable prayer
- or a thousand, echoes of sighs breathed the world over - and watch, but
not for long, as it floats away. I cast out another, then another and another,
at first choosing only the lovely ones but quickly becoming indiscriminate
as I decide it does not much matter.
With a light step I turn to leave.
Until tomorrow, I say to myself, and the brook, bearing my little rafts,
answers its faithfulness in familiar
monotones.
— Audrey Coty
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