Journal

Maple on Tap

8 March 2020

In upstate New York, maple syrup making is an annual tradition. A friend of mine taps their trees, and several of their neighbor’s trees (with permission, of course) to gather several hundred gallons of sap. All of this needs to be boiled down. It takes about fifty gallons of sugar maple sap to get a gallon of syrup. Boiling can be a big job, so this weekend I went over to help out a bit.

The wood-fired cooker needs to be tended for hours on end.

The sap goes into a shallow pan so that steam can be boiled off.