Collecting sap and boiling it into syrup over an open flame is the perfect celebration of this week’s spring-like temperatures.
When boiled down, 40-liters of sap yields 1-liter of syrup! It also takes approximately 40 years for a maple tree to become large enough to tap. Sugar Maples are the best producers of maple sap, but black and red maple trees are also producers of the same sweet sap.
Many backyard “sugarers” embrace the traditional bucket and spile method to collect their maple water. When daytime temperatures creep above freezing and overnight temps below, it’s time to tap your trees as these conditions guarantee your best “run”.
Explore your backyard in search of the sugar maple’s brown, furrowed bark with deep rifts between each plate and relatively symmetrical, upward arching branches. There is nothing sweeter than the smell of maple sugaring wafting through the warm breeze.
Visit Great Mountain Forest’s Sugar Shack at 201 Windrow Road in Norfolk, CT
to see, smell, and taste the sweet syrup of the Litchfield Hills.
(Below Photos GMF Sugar Shack 2017)