Sugar Weather
1Every March, Mei spent a week with her grandfather in the hills where he lived. Grandpa Lu had a small sugarhouse at the edge of his woods. This year, Mei was finally old enough to help him make maple syrup.
2On the first morning, frost covered the windows, and Mei could see her breath on the porch. By lunchtime, though, the sun felt warm, and water dripped from the icicles on the roof. Grandpa smiled at the sky. "This is sugar weather," he said. "Freezing nights and warm days make the sap run inside the maple trees."
3After lunch, they tramped through the slushy snow to visit the trees. Earlier that week, Grandpa had drilled a small hole in each sugar maple and tapped in a metal spout. A bucket with a lid hung from every spout, and Mei could hear the sap going plink, plink, plink as it dripped inside.
4Mei lifted one lid and peeked in. The bucket was half full of sap that looked as clear as water. "It doesn't look like syrup at all," she said. Grandpa laughed. "Taste it," he said. Mei dipped in a finger. The sap tasted like water with only a hint of sweetness.
5Together, they emptied the buckets into big containers on a sled and pulled the sap back to the sugarhouse. Inside, Grandpa lit a fire under a long, flat metal pan and poured in the sap. Soon, clouds of sweet-smelling steam rose from the pan and drifted out through an opening in the roof. "That steam is water leaving the sap," Grandpa explained. "We have to boil away most of the water to make syrup."
6The boiling took all afternoon. Mei added wood to the fire while Grandpa stirred the sap and watched it closely. Little by little, the sap turned from clear to golden, and it grew thicker. Mei frowned at the pan. "We started with so many buckets, and now there's only a little left," she said. "That's why maple syrup is special," Grandpa said. "It takes a lot of sap to make a small amount of syrup."
7At last, Grandpa dipped a thermometer into the pan and nodded. The syrup was ready. He poured it through a filter into glass jars, and the jars glowed in the evening light. That night, Mei and Grandpa ate pancakes with warm maple syrup. Mei thought it was the best syrup she had ever tasted, because she had helped make it herself.