Nice know that I have struck a bit of a chord, as it were, with some readers of my book, Maple Syrup. Turns out there is a subculture of maple syrup enthusiasts out there, some of whom have composed songs about their affection for the sweet stuff, and some of whom have read my book and want to share their songs with me.
As another maple syrup season begins, the other day I heard from one lawyer, Ben Riley, who grew up in North Granby, Connecticut, and now lives in San Francisco. He writes, “Our house was 200 years old and surrounded by massive old sugar maples. Every year one of the local producers would tap our trees and in return we received a gallon or so of the completed syrup.”
He’s a singer-songwriter and he composed a ballad about maple syrup, “Forty to One,” which refers to the ratio of sap to maple syrup. He sent me a recording of the song. He sings:
“Late winter maple trees storing summer sun,
Warm days and cold nights coax the sap to run.
Tap the gnarled sturdy trunks, drops so sweet to come,
Rendered in the sugar house, 40 gallons becomes 1.”
The other budding (as it were) songwriter who sent me their maple syrup tune is Stewart Richardson, who has a sugar bush and sugar shack in Northumberland County east of Toronto. In his song, Sap’s a Runnin’, Richardson sings,
“When March’s sun is high and bright
The sap’s a running and things seem right
When it starts to boil down
The nectar of the gods will soon be found.”
I have to quibble with one detail: I am not sure about the word “soon.” It can take days of boiling to turn sap into maple syrup; in that respect the “40 to 1” song offers a more honest portrait of the effort involved in boiling sap into syrup. But the passion comes through in both tunes, and that’s what counts.
Thanks to both these enthusiasts. And just an fyi, you don’t have to have a maple syrup song to write to me!
Riley also wrote:
“Great job writing this book. I hope it’s a commercial success. But perhaps more importantly, it spreads the good news of maple syrup and the importance of being good stewards of our forests.”
I hope so too.