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Chilly nights, sunny days, time to gather maple sap and boil it for syrup

SHARON — It’s that special time of year, when the nights are very cold but the days are relatively warm and sunny. This is the season when sap shoots up through the trunks of the sugar maple trees, and the season when sugar makers collect the sap and boil it down into maple syrup. 

The Sharon Audubon Center hosted its annual Maple Fest on Saturday, March 16, to share the lore and history of this New England tradition.

The tour begins with a short walk along a path lined with maple trees that have been “tapped” with spiles that allow the sap to flow out into old-fashioned metal buckets. The change from the cold nights to the warmer days creates a reaction in the tree that forces the sap up through the trunk and out the spiles into the bucket. 

Audubon’s Sunny Kellner was one of this year’s tour guides. She explained how the buckets are collected daily, and the sap is then strained through a filter to remove debris from the trees and any bugs that might have wandered in for a sip of sap. 

The purified sap is then taken into the sugar shack and poured into the large metal tray that is heated with firewood until the clear sap begins to condense into thick amber syrup. The highest quality syrup is the amber; the darker colored syrup that is made toward the end of the sap season is considered to be lower quality, but many people prefer its rich, caramely flavor.

Audubon’s Wendy Miller showed visitors the apparatus used to measure the progress from sap to syrup; and she explained that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup — and that many, many pieces of firewood are an essential part of the process. 

Everyone who had taken part in the tour was offered a taste of the finished syrup. There was also a bake sale at the Audubon shop featuring maple treats. Audubon maple syrup is available for sale in a variety of sizes. The center is on Route 4. For store hours and more information, go to www.sharon.audubon.org.

Lakeville Journal

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