When I was about eight years old, my grandparents came back to Manila from Vancouver for Christmas, and they gave me the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder as a present. I loved them — partly because they had such good eating in them, and also because they described daily life in a mileu that was totally unfamiliar and completely fascinating.
I remember especially vividly the story of sugaring off in Little House in the Big Woods…how Laura’s grandpa whittled and hammered little troughs into the trunks of maple trees to collect their sap, and how he would boil the sap in a big iron kettle hung between two trees to make the maple sugar. One year, there was a “sugar snow,” a last cold snap that caused an extra-long run of sap, so that there was enough for Laura’s grandparents to throw a party, with music and dancing and “hot hasty pudding with maple syrup for supper,” and best of all, maple candy that was made by pouring the hot syrup onto pans of snow.
Well, this may not be the Big Woods of Wisconsin, but Québec has its own maple syrup traditions. During my first visit to a cabane de sucre (sugar shack) I was delighted to see the sugaring-off story come alive in front of my very eyes.
These pictures were taken at La Sucrerie de la Montagne, which I am told is by far the best sugar shack in the region. They have an excellent, all-you-can-eat menu of traditional Québecois cuisine, a boulangerie with an enormous wood-burning oven where they bake all their bread, and all-season accommodations so that you can come and enjoy the surrounding woods. Sugaring-off season starts in February and will continue until April.
Maria Olaguera 