Thanks to the Stowe Land Trust for making this small 75 acre property open to the public. Once a family sugarbush, operating for over 50 years until the 1990s, the land now has a 4 mile trail system through its mature forest. A sugarbush is a Sugar maple tree forest used in the production of maple syrup. We all think of Vermont as the center of this activity but Quebec now accounts for 70% of the world's production.
The Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is predominately used as the source of the sap for the syrup. Other maples are also used to a lesser extent including Red maple, Black maple and Florida maple (also known as Southern Sugar maple). The sugar content of the sap is highest in Sugar maples. Depending on the content, a gallon of syrup requires about 30 gallons of sap, give or take. Mature trees are tapped in the late winter when temperatures are often freezing at night and warming during the day. The sap rises and falls in the tree during this time allowing sap to be extracted. There is a one to two month window for collecting sap.
The sugar house ruins
Sap used to be collected in buckets and emptied daily into larger vats. Buckets were replaced by plastic bags and now by a system of tubing. A tubing system connects every tree at the tap point, using gravity to flow the sap from the highest elevation trees to the lowest where a collection station is located.
Then it is time to boil away the water in the sap. The sugar house here, used a long rectangular vat heated by a wood fire below. Often, boiled sap would be transferred to a smaller vessel for the final boil which needed to be more controlled. The final boil was the art of making syrup, trying to get the color and taste correct for the most expensive grade - light amber grade A. I prefer the darker grades which tend to have a stronger flavor bordering on burnt. Maybe that is because that is the way I used to make it as a kid. It would be dark outside while boiling and hard to control the heat of a fire. I had one batch just turn to sugar. It was like hard sugar candy.
Bucket dump
Paper birch trees are also used to make a syrup to much lesser extent. It is used more as a flavoring for beverages and sauces. The sugar in birch sap is fructose and glucose. Maples have the more complex sucrose in the sap.
This maple is not letting go
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