MapleFest: Beautiful for a tour, terrible for tapping

SHARON — It was a truly  beautiful day for traversing the trails of the Audubon Center on Saturday, March 20, with  unseasonably warm temperatures that hit the 70-degree mark.

But, as Audubon volunteer Sandy Slemmer explained, with a trace of disappointment in her voice, the weather was way too warm and dry this year for a productive maple syrup season.

“The ideal weather for collecting sap from maple trees is 20 degrees at night and 40 degrees during the day,� Slemmer said. “We are already done for this season.�

The season began only a couple week ago. But that’s the thing with making maple syrup: It’s different every year.

She estimated that Audubon was able to get only about 30 gallons of syrup this year about half what it normally collects.

At the annual MapleFest, visitors normally get to see how the center taps the maple trees and how the clear sap is boiled into brown, fragrant syrup. But there was no sap running this year during the event.

Nonetheless, Slemmer and other volunteers and Audubon staffers made the best of the situation.

Visitors were given a tour of an Audubon trail lined with maple trees that have one or more metal pails hanging on their trunks.

In most of the collecting pails, all that was left was sap residue and some twigs and bugs.

“On many of the trees, you can attach three to four buckets  to collect the sap,â€� Slemmer said. “Drilling for taps does not hurt the trees. It’s sort of like scars on people. The holes fade away over time.â€�

After visitors were given a tour of the trail, they were taken to the sugarhouse, where the sap gets boiled into syrup.

At last year’s MapleFest, the temperature outside was cold and the sugarhouse was warm and toasty for visitors.

At this year’s MapleFest, thanks to the warm temperatures outside, the sugarhouse felt like a sauna.

Wendy Miller, Audubon’s education program manager, explained the sugaring process.

“All you need to do is boil the sap for a long time,� Miller said. “You know when it’s done when the temperature is just right, usually 219 degrees.�

From the sugarhouse, visitors were taken to a campfire at the trail, where Environmental Education Intern Katrina Venhuizen educated visitors on the folklore behind the centuries-old process of making natural suga.

“Maple syrup came to be by accident, but sometimes accidents can be a good thing,� Venhuizen said. “An Indian hunter would leave his axe on a tree so he knew where to find it. One day, his wife noticed some sap coming out of the tree. She didn’t know what it was, but she tasted it and it tasted sweet. She eventually gathered it and boiled it and served it to her husband, who loved it.�

Syrup is still available for sale at Audubon, but supplies are limited. Stop by the gift shop at the center or call 860-364-0520.