Maple Syrup History The process of making maple syrup is an age-old tradition of the North American Indians, who used it both as a food and as a medicine. They would make incisions into trees with their tomahawks and use birch barks to collect the sap. The sap would be condensed into syrup by evaporating the excess water using one of two methods: plunging hot stones into the sap or the nightly freezing of the sap, following by the morning removal of the frozen water layer. When the settlers came to North America, they were fascinated by this traditional process and in awe of the delicious, natural sweetener it produced. They developed other methods to reduce the syrup, using iron drill bits to tap the trees and then boiling the sap in the metal kettles in which it was collected.
It requires an average of 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. This afternoon the trees are running about
28 drips per. minute give or take a few.
Maple sap can run at the rate of up to 150 drops-per-minute.
Right now I've got about 30 taps in trees and I plan on finishing up the batch I've got boiling and then collect sap this week for next weekends boil. There is something relaxing about spending so much time outside nursing a fire. Here's a shot of the sugar shack, top down. I finished the batch about 10:00 pm, about 2 quarts total. This time of year the birds are quit active. I've had whooping cranes and geese fly over, a king fisher hanging out by the bridge, a harrier hawk flying slowly low above the hay field looking for small rodents and lots of cardinals and juncos along the edge of the timber.
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