from trees to syrup

I just love how this painting (artist unknown) depicts Maple Sugaring back in the Colonial days. It's not too much different from how we New Englanders make syrup now.

The kids and I attended a program on Maple Sugaring at our favorite park today -- I'd arranged for them to put on the program and rounded up some of our fellow homeschooling buddies to join us. It worked out great -- we wound up with 22 kids who got a wonderfully educational presentation for just a few dollars each.

We started outdoors, identifying Sugar Maples, sizing up trees to see if they were too big, too small, or just right for tapping, determining by the size and health of the tree how many taps they could take without harming it, learning about using a yolk to carry buckets of sap from trees in the woods to the sugar house, and tasting sap.

Then it was into the sugar house to discuss boiling down the sap into syrup. We measured the sap we collected with a hygrometer, and discovered that we would need 43 gallons of sap in order to make one gallon of syrup. (I guess today's sap wasn't as sweet as it should be -- generally you need about 40 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.) We learned that the sap becomes syrup when it reaches 219 degrees Fahrenheit. We compared the various grades of Maple Syrup. and discussed other types of trees that syrup can be made from. (For instance, you can make syrup from birch trees, but it requires 80 gallons of sap per gallon of syrup.) A new piece of information for me -- I found out that Vermont has a different standard for their syrup, preferring a thicker syrup than Maple Syrup produced elsewhere. Learn something new every day....(I used to work on a Vermont Maple Sugaring operation, and never new that!)


Then we moved to the classroom to hear some stories about how making sugar from maple sap first was discovered (those Native Americans, they were clever folks!) and how they learned to boil the sap down all the way to produce sugar rather than syrup, so that it would keep longer. The kids also had a chance to drill a hole in a tree trunk and place a tap. And then our instructor discussed other types of sugars with us -- sugar beets, sugar cane, corn syrup, and honey.


A display in the nature center gave us a close-up look at the tapping and collection methods used by local Native Americans, European Colonists, and more modern methods as well.

Great program, and coming at a great time in our block -- we've had time to process and work artistically with the "Sugaring Time" Enki Nature story, we've been enjoying our Maple Sugaring Adventure Circle, and at story time all week we've been reading Sugarbush Spring by Marsha Wilson Chall, illustrated by Jim Daly, so it was a great time to get a closer look at the actual process.