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Looking for sugar
Lyn Bales - Thu, Aug, 6, 2009
When human beings have a full complement of teeth, they have eight incisors, four canines, eight bicuspids and twelve molars for a total of 32. I’m not sure which one of these is the “sweet tooth,” but it’s probably one of the big ones.
In this part of the country, our ancestors relied on sugar cane as one of their major sources for sweetener. The tall perennial grass in the genus Sorghum thrives in the drier and warmer conditions found in the South.
Originally known as “Guinea corn,” African slaves introduced the crop into the United States in the early part of the 1600s. It has been widely cultivated in the U.S. since the 1850s for the production of sweeteners, primarily in the form of sweet sorghum, or molasses.
Farther north, in New England and the Great Lakes regions, sugar cane will not grow. Native Americans living there satisfied their sweet cravings by collecting the watery sap of sugar maples in birch-bark vessels and boiling it down in kettles on open fires. The end result was syrup or sugar. Historically, making maple syrup can be traced back hundreds of years to the Menominee tribe of the Great Lakes.
In 1621, the dessert served at the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock and the Wampanoag Indians was pumpkin stewed in maple sap.
Our European ancestors quickly learned the sugar making process that today many folks simply call “sugarin’.”
Locally, some maple trees were tapped to make maple syrup. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Sugarlands get their name from the sap collecting that was once done there.
It takes approximately ten gallons of watery sap to boil down to one quart of syrup. Typically a mature sugar maple produces about ten gallons of sap during the four to six week sugaring season in late winter and early spring. So, one tree yields one quart of syrup.
Recently, I got a phone call from a woman named Jackie. She moved here from the North and wants to rekindle her maple syrup making skills but she has no trees nor the time to grow them. She is looking for sugar maples to tap. I told her that I had none on my property, but would ask around. So if you have a sugar maple tree or trees and would not mind Jackie tapping for sap this upcoming January, please let me know at one of the contacts below.
I’m sure she will share some of her sweet product with you.
Anyone for pancakes?
Lyn can be reached at 865-577-4717, ext. 19 or e-mail him at stephenlynbales@gmail.com. His book “Natural Histories: Stories from the Tennessee Valley” is available at local bookstores.
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