In the Neighborhood: Maple Syrup Production

With the warm up in temperature this week, the maple syrup season has ended, perhaps a little earlier than usual.  In the end though, it was still a long run for collecting sap, which started running much earlier in the year than normal.  In fact, our neighbor half way down the street mentioned that it was actually a bumper year for sap because the temperature hovered right below freezing at night and right around 35-40 degrees during the day for weeks on end this year.  Our neighbor half way down the street taps trees next to our house, his house and another house farther down the street, as well as a few select trees in between.  His girls gather up our crew of kids and most days they have rambled along the street, a wagon clattering behind them, emptying the milk jugs filled with sap into bigger containers.  Most of the sap collected gets combined with sap from a few other families on other streets.  Someone has access to a commercial freezer, and the sap gets boiled off together to make maple syrup.

This year there was so much sap that the freezers were pretty much all full, so our neighbor actually ended up boiling some of the sap himself.  He invited us over for pancakes during spring break, served with authentic syrup from the trees on our street.  It was yummy.  Deliciously yummy, and I”m not even usually that excited about syrup (I’m a yogurt and fruit girl when it comes to pancakes).

The kidlets have loved the job of collecting sap with friends.  It was fun to see them all so invested.

Its also amazing how much sap some of the trees produce when they are running.  Sometimes the gallon milk jugs needed to be emptied two or three times a day.  It takes a lot of sap to make a little syrup, though.  I think the ratio is something like 40 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of syrup.