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| As winter wanes and spring begins, sap rises from the roots and travels to the treetops. |
In March, when the daytime temperatures rise to 45° and night temperatures drop below freezing, the time is right for sugar maples to produce sweet sap.*
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| The liquid gold drips off the spout, slowly filling the pail. |
If tapping is done too early, the tap holes may dry up; if done too late, the season may be over in a week and missed completely.
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| Sunshine from the South shines in the leafless forest, giving warmth to the trees even though the air is still chilly. |
A 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch hole is bored waist high and about 2 inches deep into the tree. A spile (spout) made of hardwood is driven into the hole to fit snugly. A bucket is hung on the spile to collect the sap.
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| The girls catch the running sap with their hands and greedily lick their fingers. |
Raw sap is 97% water, maple syrup is about 37% water. This excess water must be cooked off in a large kettle or evaporating device. The resulting liquid is sugar and mineral salts.
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| Sap has just a touch of sweetness but mostly tastes like water. This doesn’t stop Emmy and Lily from collecting more sap on their fingertips! |
At this altitude the syrup must reach a temperature of 218°F to be called maple syrup. If maple sugar is desired, continue cooking until the boiling point of 234°F is reached.
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| Mmmm, maple syrup! Lily doesn’t even need the French toast stick. She simply drinks the sweet stuff. |
It requires 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. If syrup is boiled between 218°F and 234°F you get “Jack Wax”, a chewy sweet, much like taffy.
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| *The text in this post is from this sign, posted at Maple Syrup Days. However, the captions are mine. |
Happy Spring!
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what a great post! Reminds me of my childhood. We'd take the syrup tour & get to eat it drizzled on snow at the end 😀
This is just soooooooo neat to me….because I have never seen it or experienced it. Another blogger also showed this and I wished I could take a trip and come see it. How much fun.
What a fantastic outing. I wish we had something like that here. I never even tasted actual maple syrup until recently. I always opted for the cheaper "pancake" syrup variety. Just like a kid to go straight for the syrup.
You brought back wonderful memories for me. I used to love to take the kids to festivals where they did this!
Now I want to make a recipe involving maple syrup or maple sugar! Hmm, I'll have to see what I can find. If you know of any, let me know. I'll try them out on my blog.
I think that would be the coolest thing ever to be able to just drink syrup from a tree! Alas, not in FL. THe girls are getting so big!
Wow, how interesting! Thank you for sharing and linking up at my party:)
I love the closeups of the tap. So very cool!Thanks for coming by my blog on my SITS day the other day. I really appreciate it 🙂
Wow, that was really interesting. Thank you.
I had to stop by and see your blog… Love the information about maple syrup as I miss having the homemade kind from back east. It brings back memories for me…
LOVE real maple syrup: it's worth the money to me! These are really GREAT pictures.
Great pictures!