-the grove of maple trees being tapped is called the "sugar bush"
-it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. A family of 5 can produce enough syrup for their needs with 3-4 large maples and maples need to be at least 40 years old before tapping (I've got my eye on the maples across the street)
-Native Americans made maple sugar by burning bowl-shaped hollows into logs, pouring sap in, and sticking hot rocks in the basin to evaporate the water out of the sap
-the evaporator steam is one of the most heavenly smells ever-if you cut a shallow trough around the entire circumference of a tree, it will probably die of starvation
-Nine 7 year-olds will cover themselves with sap from a tree tap in about 10 seconds flatI'm craving pancakes.
4 comments:
Oh, this sounds so much better than a tour of the local cheese factory.
When I die, my heaven would be living on a farm just like this, with an unlimited supply of pancakes, french toast, and waffles. Yummy!
Cool stuff! Maybe Bryn should add Maple Syrup harvesting to her list of job aspirations?
It's a little bizarre that you just did this post b/c out of nowhere, Eli has been asking me questions about getting syrup out of trees. (I'm thinking there was something on Sesame Street recently) He was delighted when I showed him these pictures and immediately demanded we go drill some holes in our trees and obtain some syrup.
I learned a great deal from this field trip. I never had a maple syrup field trip. I used to pick potatoes and beans, but this looks much more delicious and worth getting sticky over! Good choice!
Post a Comment