Sugar Shack

In the late 1830's Abolitionist David Lee Child began a sugar beet plantation in New England, attempting to create an alternative to slave-grown cane sugar. Since then, sugar has perhaps never left its place as a controversial product: high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified crops, food safety and security, munitions production, anarchism, neo-colonialism, environmentalism, you name it. The history and the expectations of sweetness remain so ingrained in our culture and on our taste buds.

The politics of sugar production are fraught with slavery, environmental degradation, and negative health effects of industrial sweeteners. In a moment where high fructose corn syrup made with governmental subsidies is what we put on our pancakes, and with a history of DIY resistance, it made sense to learn how to tap trees and grow beets, in an attempt to create a model for sugar production and sustainability. In "Sugar Shack," a new project I am developing with UIowa Professor and friend David Dunlap, those expectations are challenged and history is played out through the production of two crops of sugar: sugar beet molasses and walnut, birch, bitternut syrup.

The sugar produced will not taste like white sugar purchased from the super market. Instead it will be earthy beet molasses or buttery syrup made from lesser known syrup producing trees. But perhaps we need to realize that what we are used to is not always best for us, best for the environment, and so forth.

We started tapping trees on his property--know as Walnut Farms-- and at my house. We've hosted a spile making workshop, a tour of Walnut Farms, and a sample boil down, resulting in 1/2 pint of syrup from one week production from ten trees. Not enough to feed an army, but enough to learn how to do it on your own.

Hopefully more about this evolving project will be posted here as time goes on, but I'm excited by the collaboration. We're building a sugar shack out of the materials from a tower he built on his property years and years ago, and he's weaving the history of his accidental farming into the historical narrative I'm fleshing out. So far, its super fun.