With incredible loving care and lots of effort, we finally reposted the entirety of the original Civil Servitude webcomic run from 2006-2012, including Mayor Percy’s monthly “Mayor’s Memos” and the associated Jackson Press essays we also published from time to time.
To read from the beginning please click below. Or peruse the navigation for an episode title that tickles your fancy and Enjoy!
Desperate bits of late winter snow clung to the shadows, hiding desperately from the weak, sporadic March sunshine.
We tried our hand at making syrup again Saturday. Maybe you’ll recall the less-than-perfect results from our last attempt – a quart-sized baggie full of very sticky pieces of hard maple candy. They’re edible, some might even say tasty, and certainly super sticky icky sweet.
But it was a tangible result from our gallons of collected maple sap, something you could hold in your hand and taste with your tongue.
Alas, it wasn’t maple syrup.
And making my own maple syrup was still the objective, the benchmark of maple-based products.
Fortunately, the weather decided to cooperate again towards the end of the week and we redeployed our sap jugs to collect the clear, sticky fluids. Within two days we had another four-plus gallons of fresh sap ready to process, so we poured a gallon and a half into the pot and once again fired up the gas grill. It was 11:45 on Saturday morning.
Now please let me remind you that boiling maple sap to get maple syrup is a time consuming and boring exercise. Let me also remind you that it typically takes 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to yield one gallon of syrup. And let me also remind you that I have silver maples, the less sugary brethren of the maple family line that typically must donate two to four times as much sap to produce a gallon of syrup as their more sugary brethren, sugar maples.
Did you know that Ohio is fourth largest of the twelve states that produce maple syrup in the US?
Finally, allow me to also remind you that a watched pot takes FOREVER to boil. And this time we occupied our time with other household chores, only checking the steaming pot every forty-five minutes or so all afternoon.
Like before, I was very patient with my sap boiling. VERY patient!
About five o’clock we left to have dinner with friends. I instructed the children to keep a wary eye on the grill to make sure the house didn’t burn down. The implied responsibility of that statement – specifically the phrase “don’t let the house burn down” – left them flabbergasted and flustered. You’d have thought I just handed them the locked briefcase containing the American nuclear launch codes, still attached to the President’s severed hand.
”Look, if the house is on fire first call 9-1-1, then call me. I may want you to save the sap,” I said only half-jokingly. Then I added another half gallon of sap to the pot, just to make sure it didn’t boil down to nothing while we were gone.
I needn’t have worried. Two hours later and my pot ‘o sap was still boiling along, the drop in fluid level barely perceptible.
Let me remind you that one must boil off between 96-98% of the water in sap before even getting close to making syrup. Then, once at four percent, the sugar starts to concentrate and the fluid takes on its amber color and sweet taste.
After dinner, we had friends over for poker, which I interrupted every other hand by running out into the chilly dark to check the status of my sap.
”That sounds like a euphemism for something else,” my friend said.
”What? ‘Off to check my sap’?” I thought about it for a second. “Yes, it does. And I need both a headlamp and a candy thermometer to be thorough,” I replied with a smile. Such was the tone my evening took as I babysat my boiling sap, ever hopeful to create some syrup as I also played a decent game of poker.
By 11:30 (PM!) we were close!
Wanting to keep a constant vigil, I placed The Eldest Child in charge of my remaining poker chip stash. Then I carefully took the pot off the grill and into the house. The sweet smelling steam filled the room, giving me hope. Now was the critical time, where the smallest actions, or inactions, or inattention, or even impatience, could ruin the entire day’s work.
Except this time I was going to finish the sap in the microwave, where I would have better control. I poured the sweet fluid into a microwave dish, covered it, and zapped it on High for three minutes. When I pulled the dish back out the sap was no longer sap; it had finally taken on the amber colored viscous consistency of syrup.
I put it back in and zapped it again. The Eldest Child quickly lost what was left of my poker chips to her mother. At least we kept it in the family.
After the third round of stirring and zapping I decided it was done. The fact that the syrup boiled over the sides of the dish making a very golden sticky mess on the microwave turntable helped cement that decision.
I carefully poured my precious syrup into a sealable plastic bowl. Then I let everyone dip their fingers into what syrup still coated the dish, practically forcing them to taste it as proof that I had finally indeed masterfully made my own syrup.
And I had! I actually had a whole cup of syrup, in fact.
It was more than enough for the two waffles The Eldest Child made for me the next morning. And as I ceremoniously poured my syrup onto the waffles, I carefully took pictures and bragged about my accomplishments on Facebook and Twitter.
The syrup made the waffles, which were a little soggier than I prefer, absolutely freakin’ delicious. I even had syrup leftovers for the next morning!
Then I did the math. Or rather, The Wife made me do the math. Here’s what I spent on my little syrup experiment:
– $15 for fifteen sap spiles (these are the spouts that get stuck into the tree).
– $15 for a stock pot to boil the sap in (which can be used for other things).
– $15 for tubing and hooks. The tubing was to connect the spiles to the jugs and the hooks were to hang the jugs on the trees with. Both reusable.
– Half a tank of LP gas from the grill.
– two months saving gallon jugs to collect the sap.
– 24-plus hours of my life boiling sap.
And the results?
Well, if you divide my actual expenses equally between both the hard candy and the syrup, my cup o’ homemade maple syrup cost me approximately $22.50. As did the bag of hard candy.
Now allow me to put that cost into proper perspective.
A 12.5 ounce bottle of Grade A dark amber maple syrup costs about seven bucks ($7) at Walmart. I had a cup of Jaxn Acre Grade A light amber syrup. There are eight ounces in a cup. So using that Walmart bottle of syrup for comparison, if I’d had a full 12.5 ounces of my own syrup it would cost approximately $33.75 per bottle.
Yes, $33.75 for a mere 12.5 ounces of organic golden amber deliciousness!
”It’s about the experience, dear,” I reassured The Wife when she gave me a disgusted look after I shared the syrup costs.
“And look, I’ve got a great story to share. Plus I learned a rare skill. Think how valuable that skill will be when the zombie apocalypse happens. We can trade our sweet syrup for bullets and food! That is, provided you guys can keep the zombies away for the twelve hours it takes to boil the sap down to syrup.”
The Wife rolled her eyes. The grand Jaxn Acre Maple Syrup Experiment was over.
In the course of dismantling my project I removed nine taps and dumped out over nine gallons of fresh sap. A little disheartened at the waste, I took several sips of the sap to relieve my thirst. It tasted just like sweetened water, which was exactly what it was.
So now I can say that I have made my own maple candy and my own maple syrup, all from sap from trees from my own property. And it was truly an interesting and rare learning experience.
But in the end, of my maple syrup experiment, I can only say this – I was given far more sap than patience!
So how many bullets for a cup of syrup?
Reimagination. Reinvention. Evolution.
I’ve always admired these concepts, always respected people who could change themselves and mold their lives into something new and different. It takes guts and creativity to change yourself into something new.
It’s called evolution.
And it’s something so innate in who we are as humans that I find it impossible to believe we are driven to grow by any other force.
I’ve seen it happen so many times, over and over again in artists and musicians, and I’m constantly amazed and impressed by those who do it successfully. It’s like watching a person’s evolution unfold right in front of you.
And those who accomplish it successfully, who stay true to themselves while allowing change to reimagine the core of who they are at heart, are truly inspirational.
So, yes, I admire and respect personal growth.
It’s something I strive for, albeit not always successfully. And that is the crux of the issue – finding one’s path of personal growth and stepping down it.
I’ve been trying to figure out my next steps for years, trying to understand who I am and what I want. It’s a difficult exercise, requiring a level of honesty and clarity that I sometimes have trouble achieving. It requires acceptance of who you are and what you want, even when the answers to those questions aren’t what you might want them to be.
But change is both good and bad, so if you don’t like something about yourself all you have to do is change it, right?
It’s that easy and it’s that difficult. And it requires desire and determination and devotion (the Three D’s!) to achieve.
Yeah, I also sometimes have trouble with those last two D’s. I’m fairly lazy at heart, another trait I’d like to change, if I wasn’t so lazy…
It’s really all about self-actualization, isn’t it?
This is a concept first made prominent by Abraham Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs theory.
It is the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic physical and mental needs are fulfilled. So once you’ve got a roof over your head and clothes on your back and food in your belly and good friends and a little money in the bank, you free yourself up to strive for your full personal potential.
As Wikipedia puts it, “… self-actualization – the need to be good, to be fully alive and to find meaning in life. Research shows that when people live lives that are different from their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose goals and lives match. For example, someone who has inherent potential to be a great artist or teacher may never realize his/her talents if their energy is focused on attaining the basic needs of humans.”
That is the personal battle we all fight in our path of personal evolution. Even in today’s rich American lives, it’s still a fight to stay focused, to not be distracted, to find the truth within the fog that is the modern, first-world life.
Writing helps me with some of this, offering a path for self-discovery through the murky gloom of life. It’s a process of personal evolution I’ve been undergoing my whole life. But writing requires having a story to share. And creating stories requires action.
To Write, one must Do.
I’ve always been a builder. I’ve always made things with my hands.
I hope someday to eventually become a craftsman, to construct wonderful works of functional art with my own two hands. Even as a kid I made my own toys from scraps of wood and cardboard, old nails and masking tape. As an adult I’ve rebuilt and recycled old cars and motorcycles into new entities with new purposes and new personalities.
I like discovering the New within the Old. Call it the Evolution of Things.
I’ve always found immeasurable satisfaction in crafting something out of nothing or recreating something new out of an object somebody else deemed worthless. And I find working with my hands to be a very visceral activity, tangible actions filled with struggle and sweat and pain and blood and tears and joy.
I’ve always found it immensely rewarding, relaxing, and cathartic. Sacred, even. My garage can be as hallowed as a church, at times, in the midst of some project. And the reward for my soul is in the exploration and eventual discovery of whatever it is the thing wants to be.
And it also reveals the beginning of the next steps, another path slowly emerging from the path I just followed.
I’ve seen self-actualization in animals, too. At least in good hunting dogs, to be specific (not MY dogs, of course!).
I’ve been in a field hunting pheasants with good pointers who were entirely in their element, all their training and instincts gelling together to come to a fine, razor-edged point where the dog was a machine, completely in its zone, as true to its own purpose as it would ever be.
Birds were pointed; birds were flushed; birds were shot and retrieved with a frenetic bliss.
It’s something truly magical to watch, captivating and inspiring!
Of course, I’ve also seen those same dogs eat their own poop (not MY dogs, of course!). Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy!
So (expected) poop eating references aside, I’m still trying to reimagine and reinvent myself, still striving to become whoever it is I’ll eventually be.
I think I’m getting closer.
I’ve got some new ideas in my head for directions I think I’d like to go in, new projects and adventures that I want to embark upon. I’m looking for new experiences to turn into potential new stories to share.
That is as long as I’m decently fed, have an old t-shirt and comfortable jeans to wear, and live in a home with enough garage space to turn into a studio for whatever creations I can dream up!
Always Striving For The Top of Maslow’s Pyramid!
Civil Servitude by Jackson Press 