You tap maple trees by first drilling a hole in the tree then hammering in a spout to collect the sap in a bucket. It is important to cover the bucket with a lid. When you have 40 gallons of sap you can make 1 gallon of syrup.
Maple syrup is hard to make. You make it by boiling the sap for a long time and if you boil it too long it would turn to candy. It is worth the work to make it because it tastes so good on pancakes and waffles but you should only use a little bit.
There were samples of the syrup and we tried some but it made us very thirsty. We also bought some maple candy and it tasted familiar because when I was 5 years old I use to pick the dried syrup off the jug.
It was a fun day and I also liked seeing the geese and deer there.
What fun! Did you know that Scott's dad tapped all the trees in his elementary school property when he learned about sap? He got in BIG trouble. I can see where Jerome and Kai's curious side comes from.
ReplyDeleteWhen we lived in Boston we had some big maple trees in our yard. One year I bought some things to tap the maple syrup.
ReplyDeleteIt worked! We had about ten gallons of sap and we boiled it down to a pint of syrup and put it in a jar.
Someone knocked over the jar but I grabbed it in time to save some of the syrup.
When I was growing up, we had a farm in upstate New York and it had two "sugar bushes" that is two big collections of maple trees.
They used to tap the trees each year and they had a large flat pan about four feet long. They would start a fire and take the dead wood found in the forest and boil down the sap.
One thing the kids did back then was to take some of the syrupo and pour it on a bowl of fresh snow and they had a really good cold treat!
Great outing Al! I miss the Nature Center! I remember being scared of the owls.
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