Winter loosened her grip early this year, bringing sugar makers out from the warmth of their homes and into the woods to begin maple sugaring – a Vermont tradition. Steam now rises from sugar houses that dot the valleys as sugar makers, large and small, tend their fires. The warmer spring temperatures persuade the sugar maple trees to convert stored starch into sugar. The tree mixes the sugar with ground water, creating a clear cool sap. When the days reach above freezing and the nights remain below freezing, the sap flows, filling sap tanks and buckets across the state.
Sugar makers collect the sap either by pipeline or bucket. The pipeline forms a connected web of tubing running from tree to tree which sends the sap to a central storage tank. Many sugar makers will then use a vacuum extraction method to draw the sap in a steady flow. Our farm resorts to the old fashioned method of buckets and spouts. We rely solely on Mother Nature, with freezing and thawing temperatures to bring the sap pinging into the metal bucket.
As sugaring season approaches we begin tapping the trees that line our property. We first drill a hole in the tree and gently tap a spout into the hole. We then hang a bucket on a hook at the end of the spout and place a cover over it to keep rain and a late spring snow out. On warm days, you hear “ping, ping” throughout the woods as the sap drips from the spout into the pail.
Each day, we walk from tree to tree, checking for sap. We carry large 5 gallon pails with us to pour the sap from the buckets. It will take forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, so we must collect 200 gallons of sap before we can fire up our evaporator, where the sap is boiled down to syrup. Our wood-fired evaporator sits in an old “milk house” on our property where farmers of days gone by would bottle and store the milk from their cows. Our small 4 x 6 foot evaporator just fits inside, with room for wood to be stacked next to it. We pour all of the sap we collect into a storage tank behind the sugar house where gravity feeds it into our evaporator. As we boil, steam billows from the windows of the little house with a sweet maple scent.
Once the sap has boiled off all of the water and reaches 219 degrees, tiny golden bubbles fill the pan of the evaporator. The thickened sap caramelizes making rich sweet syrup. At this point, we draw off the syrup from the pan and filter it through a wool cloth before bottling.
For the next four weeks, sugaring is the topic of just about every conversation. Men stand in whispers in church and in the general stores comparing reports from their sugar houses.Trucks with sap storage tanks drive the dirt roads and farmers brag about how many gallons they have made thus far. Sugarin is a Vermont tradition that is ingrained deeply into all who live here.
Vermont Sugaring Experience
On March 24 and 25, sugar makers across the state of Vermont open their sugar houses to guests to experience a Vermont tradition. There is a large sugar house just up the road from us that is open for tours. Come stay with us in our Farmhouse Suite for the Maple Sugar Open House weekend and be treated to a pancake breakfast featuring our own maple syrup and help us collect and boil, and then go visit the neighbor’s huge rig to see how the larger operations work! Farmstay guests in the month of March will take home a pint of our own maple syrup!
