Maple Syrup

My father was born in 1905.  When he was a young man, say between 1910 and 1920, his father taught him the art of making maple syrup.  When I was of that same age, during the forties, we didn’t ever make any, but by the sixties dad had taught his eldest son, Bert, how to make syrup.  I learned from Bert in the seventies, and enjoyed it as a hobby.

In early spring, when the days are thawing, and the nights are freezing, a maple tree draws sustenance from mother earth, mostly in the form of water.  Through some chemical process sugar is added, and it is then called sap which is circulated throughout the tree adding new growth and causing the tree to bud and leaf out for another summer.

The Native Americans taught the early settlers that a portion of this sap could be extracted from a tree, and the water boiled away leaving a remainder of a sweet flavorful syrup.  A rule of thumb is that about forty gallons of sap will produce one gallon of syrup after thirty-nine gallons of water are boiled away, but this is not a hard and fast rule.

My sons used to help me when we boiled sap each spring only for our own table use.  In this manner they, too, learned the witchcraft of producing this elixir from a tree.

Photo number one, taken March 6, 2010, shows my son Carl boiling sap the way we did it back in the seventies.  It is merely a flat pan suspended over a wood fire.  Sap is put in the pan, and a hot enough fire maintained to boil it.  More sap is added to keep the pan from boiling dry.  After enough of this is accomplished you draw off the syrup remaining.  Quite simple.

Photo number two is a more modern system.  Klay Crossett (in photo) and Carl manufactured this system in an attempt to commercialize production.  Out in the woods trees are tapped, and plastic tubing is attached gravity draining the sap into a large vat.  The sap is then pumped into a tank on the back of a pickup truck and transported to the sugar house.  It is again pumped into a holding vat at that point.  Once again it is pumped to yet another tank above the boiler where a controlled gravity feed introduces it to the boiling tank.  Here the sap passes through a series of pans, ever increasing its density.  It is drawn off from the final pan as syrup.  As it is working at the moment they are able to produce about one gallon an hour of maple syrup.  I’m sure they will further perfect the system as time passes.