20 minutes blog

It's now the season of maple sugar in Quebec, the province where I was born. I'm kind of melancholic when I think about me growing up with that culture, and these adorable memories that I have from it. My granddad on my dad's side had a "cabane a sucre" which is the place where maple syrup is produced, and every spring from 0 to 12 years old I was at the "cabane a sucre" with my brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts, and my grand parents. I'll try to explain a little bit of the history that I know of the maple syrup production, how we harvest the juice from the trees, and how this is, it seems to me, a very rich tradition of the French-Canadian culture. First when our French ancestors came in America, they develop deep relationships with the native tribes who where living in Quebec and the south east part of Ontario. Among these tribes were the "Montagnais" and "Iroquois" and "Hurons" people which revealed the secret that the maple trees were holding to us French foreigners. During the spring (from about March to April) the juice of these trees is going up from the roots to the top of the branches.(which is the same for every kind of tree.) but one particular and unique quality of the maple tree juice or sap is that it is very sweet. Then during the spring, if you make a little incision in the bark of the tree, the sap will come out and we collect it to drink it or to boil it. Our ancestors owe to the native people this amazing discovery. To be continued....