Sugar Makers
Mud season isn’t all bad!
Along with the mud, comes
If you do, you might want to slow down and pay a visit. As you get out of your car, see if you can smell the sweetness in the air. Head on up to the sugar house if you see some activity and introduce yourselves. You may find you spend an unexpected, but delightful afternoon.
What will you see? You may see a big tank outside the sugar house that is full of clear, watery sap. The sap comes from the Sugar Maple. You may be invited to give the sap a taste. It will be watery, but you will taste a hint of sweetness. Inside the sugar house is a large arch and pan. This is how the sap is boiled down. The heat source in the arch may be wood or even oil fired. There is no mistaking the sweet smell in the air!
If you look inside the pan you
will see channels that the sap flows through.
As the excess water is boiled off, the sugar content
of the sap increases.
The physics of this action causes the sap to move
along the channels of the pan.
By the time the sap reaches the last channel of the
pan, it is almost done!
The sugar maker will draw off a bit of the syrup, and
use a tool called a hydrometer to test the syrup.
Is it syrup yet? It will be if the readings are just right. Next the hot syrup is graded and canned. It is now ready for you to bring home to enjoy. The Vermont Maple producers appreciate your support. It is amazing to think that it takes 40 gallons of watery sap to make just 1 gallon of maple syrup. That is a lot of steam that goes up through the vents in the roof of the sugar house. This is not the end of the story however. In order for the process of boiling the sap to occur, first you have to get it!
The process of making maple syrup is a long one. In order to tap a tree, the tree must be about 10 inches around. This is a 40 year old tree. The rule of thumb is one tap for each 10 inches. If you over tap a tree, you risk harming the tree. Trees are tapped only once a year in the late winter and early spring.
The sap is coming up from the roots and
is on its way to provide the nourishment to the tree for
creating the leaves.
For the sap to run, the nights need to be below
freezing and the days above freezing.
Later in the spring, when the temperatures stay above
freezing, the sugar season is over.
The sugar makers will tap the tree by drilling a hole in the tree and hammering in a tap. The tap can be the metal spout on which a bucket will hang, or it may be a plastic tap with pipeline attached. The sap is gathered daily so that it won’t spoil. Some days there may be only an inch or so, and other days if there is a good run, the buckets can overflow. The sap is either gathered by dumping the bucket into a pail and then into a sap tank that is in the back of a truck (or maybe even a horse drawn pung), or the sap may run down the pipeline to a gathering tank which is then pumped into the tank in the back of a truck.
And now you are back to the sugar house! Thanks for coming along for the ride. For more information and even a detailed lesson plan, you may visit the Vermont Maple Sugar Maker’s website at www.vermontmaple.org. You can even check the weekly sugaring reports. Don’t forget that the Sugar makers Open House Weekend is on March 27-29th.
There are many maple producers in the area, but these five are participating in the Open House weekend:
Woods Cider Mill at
Willis and Christina Woods
Mitch’s Maples at 2440 Green Mountain
Turnpike,
The Mitchells
Ann Rose and family
Kedron Sugar makers,
Chip
Maple Knoll Farm,
Vic and Joanne Jarvis
Photo Credits the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association
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