A Sappy, Syrupy Celebration of Spring

After a tough day of taking sap bags off trees, it's good to be able to snuggle up to a nice warm body. Mars found a couple of friends to hang with as we wrapped up Sugar Camp.


Spring has been so much more exciting for me since I met a group of people who tap Sugar Maples and teach a traditional native way of making syrup. Before trees come into leaf and tulips sprout out of the ground, there is the sweet smell of bubbling sap in great cauldrons over the fire.


Using Nature to check when the time's right to start tapping trees, you look for when cracks on the lake ice start turning dark and the days move into the 40s while evenings remain frosty, it's the perfect time to start collecting and boiling for syrup, sugar or candy molds. The first sap has the most sugar and after a couple of weeks, there begins to be a more yellow tint to it and more of a green wood taste. As the days warm and you begin to hear frogs singing in the bogs, that signals that it's time to wrap it up and bottle the last of the syrup. That's about three weeks or so later. When it's in the fifties during the day, it becomes far too warm to let sap sit in the collection bags or buckets.

The end result, however, is always worth the wait and the work.