45 ~ These days, life’s a birch

Dear friends,

The 2021 maple syrup season is now in the rearview mirror. It was a more-or-less average year –if anything as extraordinary as maple syrup can be considered average – and to the trees I am grateful.  Together we transformed 64.5 gallons of sap into 2.3 gallons of fine syrup (a ratio of 28:1).

The maples have now passed the seasonal baton to the birches. About a week ago my pal Greg and I tapped ten paper birches near the house - about two weeks later than last year (been a busy month…), and the sap flew (well, dripped rapidly) from the drill holes, and continues to flow well today.

I’d intended to write this post mainly about something else, but it seems to want to be about birch trees, so I’ll just, um, go with the flow.  I feel fortunate that the Wisconsin Driftless Area where I live is just within the southern limit of the natural range of paper birch:

A telling sign of my growing attachment to birch trees is that this week I watched the classic epic Dr. Zhivago (with Egyptian Omar Sharif playing a snowbound Russian). I love the film’s northern scenery, and found myself eyeing the birch trees as much as I did Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin. A minimalist birch rising from winter’s snow, and the same tree freshly green in spring, are two very beautiful things.  And in this film they are metaphors of resilience and endurance.

In addition, last month I took a one-day class offered by the Driftless Folk School in making traditional, Nordic-style birch bark boxes (with the ‘paper’ side of the bark forming the inside of the box). It went well, and I actually produced a reasonably good result while retaining each of my fingers. The box awaits only a deerskin toggle for its basswood lid:

As for the syruping, birch sap is different in some obvious ways from maple sap. For one, it is less sweet (my birch sap to syrup ratio will be about 120:1), with a clean, mild yet telltale taste of birch wood.  The sap also makes a distinctively thick, beautiful white foam when poured into the evaporating pot – a liquid echo of its filigree bark.  But from all that foamy whiteness comes a syrup that is extremely dark, rich and tangy.  Gypsy syrup.

As I write this I have birch sap on the boil, but given the large inputs of fuel and time required to reduce it to syrup, I also follow what Russians and in particularly Siberians do at this time of year  – drink the fresh birch sap straight, to replace vitamins and minerals lost during winter.   

There are many other things one can do with sap in spring besides drink it like water. Here’s a partial list I’ve found for both birch and maple sap, using them in place of water to:

·       Brew coffee or tea.  A sublime treat of early spring is coffee brewed with either maple or birch sap;

·       Ferment kombucha. Birch sap/raspberry kombucha?  Now we’re talkin’…

·       If you’re the drinking sort, try a scotch & maple sap instead of scotch & water. Now we’re talkin’, 2…

·       Cook beans, especially baked beans. 

·       Make oatmeal in the morning.

·       With a touch of cardamom, make wonderful, fragrant rice.

You get the idea – in spring, I simply substitute sap in nearly any recipe that calls for water. Ups the flavor, nutrition and general delight of living in cycle with the natural world. 

If anyone local is interested in trying some birch sap, I’d be happy to swap a quart for an equal volume of flour, sugar or everyday cooking oil (e.g., canola), or double the sap for an amount of coffee beans or good olive oil.  If interested, just shoot me a message a hawkcall@yahoo.com.

 In an upcoming post, we’ll go from Driftless sap to Driftless sandstone, and the ancient beauty found there.