Maple Explained
Maple Explained
Maple syrup is made by boiling the thin (like water), slightly sweet sap of the sugar maple tree in large, shallow pans over a very hot fire. The sap is boiled until most of the water in the sap has evaporated, and it is concentrated, or “reduced,” to syrup. As much as 40-45 gallons of sap are needed to produce one gallon of syrup. The main by-product of syrup production is steam!
In theory then, making maple syrup is not a complex operation. In fact, syrup production is physically demanding, labor intensive, time-consuming, and messy.
The season of production spans the bridge between winter and spring, which in Vermont tends to be a very wet and muddy time of year. It’s accepted around here that we actually have five seasons in Vermont, the 5th being “Mud Season.” Mud Season comes at the end of winter when copious amounts of melting snow and ice create muddy conditions just about everywhere. This of course is the time of year when we make maple syrup!
When we begin to set up for sugaring sometime in February, we are forced to use snowshoes to navigate the 4 to 5 feet of deep snow lying in the woods. By the time the sugaring season is over, tiny wildflowers are bursting forth from the forest floor, fiddlehead ferns are poking their dark green knuckles out from under last fall’s decaying leaves, and the tiny frogs called spring peepers are shrilling their greetings to potential mates at a volume way out of proportion to their size.
In between, if it has been a good year for maple syrup, the snow has melted, the ground has thawed, and millions of gallons of water have been released into the streams and rivers of Vermont. Meanwhile, many additional millions of gallons of water have been sucked up by the thirsty maple trees as they emerge from the dormancy of winter. This water is the main ingredient of the tree’s sap, which nourishes the tree and its newly forming leaves.
We collect sap from each one of our thousands of maple trees by tapping them. That is, as winter draws to a close we visit each tree, and we drill a small hole in the tree’s trunk. Into that hole we insert a small spout, which we secure by “tapping” it in with a hammer.
This activity is the reason that each hole with its accompanying spout is called a tap. In our sugarbush (a forest that is primarily sugar maple trees), each tap is connected to a system of pipelines through which all of the sap flows to the sugarhouse (the building where we boil the sap down to syrup). It is stored there in large tanks until it can be boiled.
Who Figured This Out?
The practice of gathering sap from maple trees and converting it to maple syrup (or maple sugar) is an ancient one, developed by the indigenous inhabitants of northeastern North America many centuries ago. Once collected, the sap was left overnight to partially freeze. The ice that forms in sap is all water; the heavier sugar doesn’t freeze. When the ice was removed, the sugar in the remaining liquid was concentrated, resulting in sweeter sap.
Then the sap was boiled until the liquid was reduced to syrup, or even further concentrated to produce sugar. This would have been a wet sugar which was then pressed into a cake form. This “cake sugar” was a highly desirable product for native people who were nomadic for certain extended periods of the year. It was easily transportable and a valuable energy booster.
From the 1600’s onward, European colonists learned the process from the natives and soon were producing their own maple sugar. For a time many hoped that maple sugar could replace or severely curtail the importation of West Indian cane sugar, which was produced using the labor of enslaved people. Maple syrup production holds a significant place in early abolitionist movements.
Because of this history, many terms related to making maple syrup refer to maple sugar. The activity itself is called sugaring; the maple forest is a sugarbush; the place where maple syrup is made is a sugarhouse; and the person who engages in these activities is a sugarmaker.
Sugaring season, this unsettled time between deep frozen winter and the return of warmth and new life in the spring, is understood by indigenous peoples to be a time of transition when the world is out of balance. The weather is unpredictable, and late season snowstorms are common. Practicing the rituals of sugaring, taking what the trees will give with gratitude and respect, offers us an intimate relationship with the changing seasons and an experience like no other.
