Our county forest preserve district hosts maple syrup hikes every year, and I thought it would be fun to go on one this year! Brian's parents came up for a quick weekend visit and joined us for the hike! I love the taste of real maple syrup and wanted to learn the process behind how they make it. My mom grew up in a town that made maple syrup and rode the sap truck around her neighborhood helping to collect the sap from each tree. To this day, the town is still tapping the maple trees and making syrup! Our hike started out with an indoor learning session along with a tasting of real maple syrup (that they harvested there at the forest preserve). We learned about how the trees make sap, when the best time to harvest the sap is (when the nights are freezing and the days start to warm to 40-50 degrees), how long the sap collecting season is (only about 4 weeks...once the trees start to get leaves, the syrup doesn't taste the same), how many gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup (40), the percentage of sugar to water before and after steaming (97% water to 3% sugar before and 34% water to 66% sugar after), and how to identify a sugar maple (grayish colored bark with ridges going up and down the trunk). We also learned that the tree needs to be at least 18 inches in diameter before it can be tapped. A little research online says that equates to more than 40 years of growth. Don't cut down the sugar maples!! After the indoor session, we took a small hike in the woods to learn a little about how they drill the hole in the trunk to put the spile in, why they put covers over the buckets (to keep out rain and snow), how they carry the sap back to the sugar house, and how they boil the sap into syrup. We then got to also taste a piece of maple sugar candy. It was a very fun learning experience! It reminded Brian and I of visiting a maple syrup place in Vermont, called Morse Farm, on our honeymoon 10 years ago. They used a more modern and efficient system of tubing connected to each other which then connected to the sugar house. They obviously have a lot larger concentration of sugar maples up there!
A couple learning activities in the library prior to our indoor session.
Hiking back to see the tapped sugar maple trees.
Some of the sap had frozen in the bucket due to the cold temperatures we had the night before. While it was cold for our hike (35 degrees), the sun was shining and there was very little wind, so it turned out to be very pleasant.
The lid over the bucket to keep the rain and snow out.
Brian helps Hailey lean into the tool that drills the hole into the trunk.
Then Clara got a turn.
Here the instructor demonstrates a balancing tool to help carry two 32 pound buckets back to the sugar house. The sap is then poured into the top of the wood stove to boil down and steam all the water out.
Hailey got a chance at trying out the balancing tool.
Clara did as well!
This was the maple place we went to in Vermont.
Here you can see the connected tubing from one tree to the next.
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