Isn’t it funny how certain childhood memories stick with you? Laura Ingalls Wilder’s description of maple sugaring in Little House in the Big Woods has stuck with me since my third grade teacher read the book to my class. I particularly remember the part about cooking the sap down far enough to be able to make maple sugar taffy by pouring it onto the snow. I have always wanted to try that! In fact, that may be the origin of another maple syrup memory, tapping the Box Elder (yes it is in the maple family) in our small Ann Arbor yard. Interestingly, as well as I remember tapping the tree and hanging a sap bucket, I have no recollection of whether we succeeded in making maple syrup. We definitely never got as far as maple sugar candy. I would remember that!!! For maple syrup candy, memory takes me to visits to my aunt and uncle in Vermont, the land of Maple syrup, where maple sugar candy was for sale everywhere. Yum! Vermont is the top maple sugar producing state in the country, more than doubling the production of the next in line, New York. Michigan produces about 1/10 of what Vermont does, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find lots of maple trees to tap here, and plenty of locally produced maple syrup for sale. So if you are in the market for maple syrup, support our local producers and look for Michigan made! And if you are curious about making your own, in the spring there are many of places around here to learn how! Our amazing Huron Clinton Metroparks are one. The Waterloo Recreation Area is another.
If you have read my other farm stories, you might already have guessed that with a number of large maple trees near the house at Green Acres, I decided to try maple sugaring. And I was lucky enough to get personal instruction! One of the Environmental Education naturalists, who visits the farm for field trips with the Ann Arbor Public schools, also teaches the maple sugaring class at Waterloo and he talked me through the process. I learned that the key to the flow of maple sap is the temperature, with daytime temperatures above freezing, and night time freezes. Temperatures are optimal in the 40s during the day and in the 20s overnight.
Although a sugar maple is the “classic” tree for maple sugaring, sap from other types of maple can also be used. To harvest the sap, a small hole is made into the side of the tree and a “tap” is placed into it, to direct the sap that runs out of the hole into a collection container. On a good day, a tap can yield a gallon or more of sap. But don’t start planning your pancake breakfast yet. Once you have collected sap, which looks like water, and doesn’t taste a thing like maple syrup, it needs to be boiled. In order for it to become the maple syrup we all know and love, enough water must be boiled away to concentrate it 40-50 fold. To put that in perspective, one five gallon bucket of sap yields about 1 pint of maple syrup.
Evaporating all that water is not something you want to be doing inside, unless you want water to be dripping off your ceiling and wallpaper peeling off your walls, so the majority of cooking needs to be done in a place open to the outside air. Outside cooking options include wood fires, or propane camp stoves and I even have a friend who had an old kitchen stove installed in her garage, just for making maple syrup.
For my maple sugaring adventure, I decided to build a small “maple syrup” fire pit, within sight of my kitchen window so I can keep an eye on it when I go inside. With this set up it takes me a day to dry down 10-15 gallons of sap. If you do the math, you will realize that I just told you that it takes me a whole day to make between 32 and 48 oz of maple syrup. IE, it is a lot of work!!!! I only make it for my family, but after my first year of maple sugaring, I told my mom that if I were to sell it, I probably would want to charge at least $50 a pint! On the upside, the temperature requirements for sap flow mean I am making maple syrup on the first collection of warmer days in the year. Since there is nothing like a Michigan winter to make a sunny 40-45 degree day feel absolutely wonderful, maple sugaring gives me a great excuse to get outside to enjoy those first warm days. In addition, since my maple syrup fire isn’t picky about what kind of wood I burn, it gives Gary and I a good opportunity to clean up and use up some of the deadwood from our woods.
As I have become more experienced with how the fire burns and how quickly (or slowly) the sap evaporates, I have learned how long I can safely step away, allowing me to get other work done while the sap is cooking. So now, with two years of experience under my belt, in this third year maybe I would sell a pint for $30! Needless to say, you wouldn’t want to be buying your maple syrup from me! But there are lots of great sources of Michigan maple syrup out there! Go find some and enjoy!!!!!