In Maine, spring yields its first sweet crop

Jars line the sugarhouse at Mitchell & Savage Maple Farm. (Jonathan Levitt for The Boston Globe)

BOWDOIN, Maine - The sugarhouse at Mitchell & Savage Maple Farm is warm and steamy. It smells like wood smoke and maple syrup. Earle (Mitch) Mitchell squints in the harsh morning sunlight and feeds firewood into the boiler. In the kitchen, his wife, Penny Savage, is baking their homegrown yellow eye beans with last spring's syrup and some thickly cut bacon from a neighbor's pig. "Today Mitch is the syrup maker and I'm the syrup baker," she says. "Maple candy, maple butter, potato rolls, and batch after batch of baked beans."

In Maine, maple syrup is the first crop of spring. For four to six weeks, from the first big thaw until the nights stop freezing and buds form on branches, sap is collected and boiled. Mitchell and Savage farm 100 acres of land about 10 minutes from Brunswick. They work with Belgian draft horses and grow beans for drying, oats, spelt, and vegetables. They keep chickens for eggs, and tap about 500 sugar maple trees to make 100 to 150 gallons of syrup. When the sap is running, they head out into the woods with the horses and go from tree to tree, and from bucket to bucket, collecting up to 400 gallons on a good day.

Back in the sugar shack, their 2-by-8-foot welded steel evaporator burns wood and struggles to reduce 50 gallons of sweet, watery sap per hour to one gallon of pure maple syrup. "Sugaring is too much work to waste on bad cooking," says Savage.

In Savage's kitchen, and around New England, maple syrup on pancakes is just the beginning. Baked apples, applesauce, glazed donuts, and all sorts of cookies and candies are the better for a few glugs from the maple syrup jug in place of sugar or honey, but the sweet, smoky, wild flavor also works on the savory side. A bean supper with maple baked beans, maple brown bread, and maple-sweetened coleslaw is good on any chilly day, no matter the season.

In New England, beans baked on the coast are generally sweetened with molasses. Historically, merchant ships brought the sweet sludge north from the Caribbean. Away from the coast, up north, and in the mountains, beans are baked with maple syrup. For our bean supper, buttery, smooth yellow eye beans, dark amber maple syrup, smoky bacon with plenty of lean, and a pinch of mustard powder will simmer into a fine pot in about four hours.

Brown bread is the traditional accompaniment. Stir rye and whole-wheat flours with buttermilk. Steam the batter in buttered ramekins. This dish, too, can be sweetened with molasses, but an equal amount of maple syrup works well.

For a crisp winter and early spring slaw, shred green cabbage, add grated carrots, and toss with a cider vinegar and mayo dressing. The unexpected and refreshing dressing with a hint of maple syrup cuts through the richness of the beans.

In Maine in early April, snow is still on the ground. The days are sunny and long, but real spring is a long way away. Somehow that's easier with a belly full of beans.

Mitchell & Savage Maple Farm, 485 West Burrough Road, Bowdoin, Maine, 207-353-4090.www.mainemaplekitchen.net

• Searched
• E-Mailed