Mmmm, Maple--another Wilder connection

(photo by Rain Rannu, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rainrannu/3150065155/)

One sample of Wisconsin pure maple syrup, and we were delightfully surprised! We knew that our usual "table syrup" was not real maple, but had no idea how good--and how much better for us--the real thing is. As one commenter on this blog said, it's like the difference between the sun and a florescent light bulb!

Our visit to Glenna Farms, between St. Croix Falls & Turtle Lake, taught us a lot about maple syrup. First, pure maple syrup is 100% natural and has no additives. Compare that with the ingredients of your usual table syrup.

Second, even though Glenna Farms is fewer than 100 miles from Laura Ingalls Wilder's birthplace, the modern maple syrup farmer has a much easier process than in Laura's day.

In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura describes the process as Pa explained it to her. Grandpa made wooden buckets and troughs out of cedar and white ash trees because those trees won't give the syrup a bad flavor. Pa tells her that when the weather warms in the spring, sap rises in the trees and Grandpa put a tap on each tree and hung a bucket on it. "The sap, you know, is the blood of a tree. It comes up from the roots, when warm weather begins in the spring, and it goes to the very tip of each branch and twig to make the green leaves grow."

(photo by jsorbius, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jsorbie/5527832157/)

Pa goes on to tell how the sap drips into the buckets, and Grandpa goes out on his sled everyday to check them and gather the sap into a barrel on the sled. Then he hauls it to a big iron kettle in the woods,where he lights a bonfire under it, and lets it cook. Every few minutes, Grandpa skims the boiling sap's surface with a wooden ladle so that it doesn't cook too fast. Grandpa cooks the sap until it condenses into syrup. Obviously, this is a very labor intensive process!

Glenna Farms uses a less labor-intensive method, letting gravity do the work. Each tapped tree is connected to tubing that allows the sap to flow through the tube and into a holding tank where it is filtered. From there, it is transferred to a vat, where an evaporator boils it down more quickly than using traditional methods. Let Ashley's field trip experience show you the process.

Here's our photo of Glenna Farms' sugar bush. Look closely toward the lower part of the trees and you will see the tubing from one tree to the next. The green shed on the right, the sugar house, is the tubing's destination and the place where the sap is cooked down to become syrup.

The result is nothing like the stuff most of us buy in the stores. No wonder it was the main source of sweetener for Laura Ingalls' family. They did not have to buy sugar and sometimes traded maple syrup or maple sugar for other necessities. The family ate it on corn cereal, hasty pudding, pancakes, and other foods.

(photo by Robert V. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajohndoeproject/95792779/)

Here are a few fun facts about maple syrup:

-The Sugar Maple is Wisconsin's state tree.

-Maple Syrup Month runs from mid-March to mid-April in Wisconsin.

-Thirty to forty gallons of sap=1 gallon of syrup.

-Wisconsin is the 4th largest producer of maple syrup producer in the country.

Read more about maple syrup here, and pass the pancakes and French toast, please!

On the Wilder Side

(Image Copyright Paul Beaman. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.)

Sometimes it pays to get off the interstate and take what William Leat-Heat Moon calls "blue highways." We did just that recently, which took us into Spring Valley in southeastern Minnesota.

Driving through town, I saw a sign that said, "Wilder Museum." If you know me or follow this blog, you know that I'm a Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, and my antennae went up. "Wilder Museum? WILDER MUSEUM?" I said as I passed the sign. Luckily, there was another sign. This time, the vehicle turned right, and took us to the Wilder Museum, housed in the old Methodist Church. A sign in front of the church let us know that, yes, it was THAT Wilder.

(click on the picture and click again to enlarge)

Almanzo's parents, brothers, and sisters, and Almanzo himself helped build and attended that church. Almanzo and Laura attended this church from 1890-1891. Almanzo's sisters, Eliza Jane and Laura, were both married here. (You may remember Eliza Jane from Laura Ingall's books. Laura did not include Almanzo's sister Laura in the Little House books, as Laura Ingalls thought it would confuse readers to have two Lauras.)

Almanzo's brother, Royal, had several businesses on Main Street, but he was not the only well-known merchant in Spring Valley.

The museum holds items from another famous citizen, Richard Sears, founder of Sears Watch Company. When Alvah Roebuck joined the business, it became Sears & Roebuck. Almanzo and Richard Sears were friends back in those days.

This site is on the National Register of Historic Places, along with other Ingalls & Wilder sites.

How did I not know this? What a delightful stop! Though we didn't have time for the entire tour, a young lady showed us Wilder family photos in the first room and told us a few stories about their lives in Spring Valley. As a stroke of coincidence would have it, the young lady was born in the town where we live. We left feeling richer for having driven off the beaten path and making these discoveries.

What discoveries have you made lately? What delights have you found off the beaten path?

By the Shores of Silver Lake in Winter

I had occasion this week to stay in DeSmet, SD--Laura Ingalls' Wilder's "Little Town on the Prairie." The motel is where Dean Butler, who played Almanzo in the Little House TV series, stays when he's in town. (Check out Butler's blog here.) It is also very near Silver Lake, now a slough, that Laura used in the title of the fifth of her Little House series. (Imagine dried cattails and tall grass poking through ice & snow in the video above. And wind--lots more wind. I did not stop to take my own photo because of the snow and wind.)

This book introduced me to the Little House series, as my third grade teacher read it aloud to us in school. I still remember passages about sliding on the ice, as we had an ice patch in front of our two-room schoolhouse that we liked to slide on, too. Laura describes it this way:

When the sun shone, no matter how cold it was, Laura had to go out. When Ma would let them go, she and Carrie, well wrapped up in coats and hoods, with shoes and mittens and mufflers on, went sliding on Silver Lake. Holding hands, they ran a little way and then slid on the dark, smooth ice. First on one foot, then on the other, with little runs between slides, they went back and forth, breathless and warm and laughing.

Those were glorious days when they were out in the glitter of the sharp cold. Then it was good to come into the warm, close house, and good to eat supper, and through the evening of music and singing and dancing, Laura was the merriest of all.

The book tells the story of building the railroad and beginning the town of DeSmet. It was also the beginning of Laura's adolescence, as she is thirteen in this book and starting to see things from a more adult viewpoint, taking on more responsibilities.

(photo by Matt Howry, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhowry/617751085/in/photostream/)

By the Shores of Silver Lake won Laura Ingalls Wilder a Newbery Honor Book Award in 1940. Many of the things Laura writes about in this book have become tourist destinations in DeSmet.

While I disagree with Laura about the excitement of being out in the cold, I admire her spirit. What do I like about winter? Staying inside, reading, writing, hot chocolate, the fireplace. What about you?

Blizzards Then and Now

Our first blizzard of the season hit Saturday, December 11 (ignore the date on the picture; it is not set correctly for some reason) . After dumping seven inches of snow swirled by wind gusts up to 53 miles per hour, this storm went on to collapse the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis and wreak havoc across the northern Midwest.

Major interstate highways were closed. We were smart enough to heed the warnings to stay put and were happy to do so. We had shelter, electricity, food, running water, and things to keep us occupied (books, TV, Christmas card writing) while the storm roared outside.

The storm reminded me of a book I read last year, The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin. It's set in our region during the blizzard of 1888, called the "Children's Blizzard" because so many children died. The book is a riveting account of prairie settlement, extreme weather, the fledging weather service and its ineptitude and politics, the science behind the weather, and the families that suffered. It's a touching book in many ways.

Nowadays, the weather service is less political and much more accurate, thanks to modern technology. Communication about weather is easily sent and received. Fabric for outerwear, boots, and gloves has improved. As a society, we have learned a lot about dealing with extreme weather. Still, people caught in it die every year.

The Children's Blizzard suggests in its conclusion that this part of the country should never have been settled, as it is not fit for habitation. It does take tough stuff to live here, but a sense of community keeps us looking out for each other and helps us laugh with each other--we're all in this together. Fortunately, in modern times blizzards don't set us back for long. Here's a typical scene in local neighborhoods the day after the storm:
Another dire blizzard account set in our region is Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter. This one, from a young teen girl's perspective, shows the effects of weeks of deprivation as supplies could not get reach town during the blizzard of 1880-1881. This story has a happier ending than the book mentioned above, with the train getting through in time to save the settlers.

Some things in this region have not changed when it comes to blizzards. The weather still rears its ugly head, and we must still be prepared. When blizzards hit, we hunker down, concerned for those who might be out in it. Forced from our daily business, we are reminded of what's most important--life, loved ones, and simple pleasures--and are thankful for what we have.



What stormy weather stories can you tell?

The Jumping-Off Place

I grew up 30 miles from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie and could take you to The Shores of Silver Lake. As I got older, I was steeped in prairie pioneer fiction, from Giants in the Earth to My Antonia to Free Land.

So I wonder how I missed this gem of a story, The Jumping-Off Place.

A novel for young people by Marian Hurd McNeely, it won the Newbery Honor Medal in 1930, and was published before Laura Ingalls Wilder began writing her famous series. Set in the early 1900's in Tripp County, South Dakota, the book tells how four siblings head west to prove up their uncle's claim. This land was some of the last opened for homesteading. The heat and drought in summer, the cold and blizzards in winter, plowing the virgin prairie, and dealing with contested claims made this a harsh environment for pioneers. The children succeed by following their late uncle's instructions, working hard, and receiving help from neighbors.

The reprinting of the book by the South Dakota Historical Society features an afterword by South Dakota author Jean Patrick. Patrick gives us historical context and biographical information about the author, who lived in Tripp County for several years before returning east to Iowa.

Jean Patrick will be one of the speakers at the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Dakotas Spring Conference in Sioux Falls on April 4. (See previous post for details.) She will inspire and guide others interested in writing for children.

What books about your surroundings are special to you?