Sunday, March 30, 2008

Maple sugaring this weekend

I bought two boxes of these maple sugar leaves today.

This maple sugar house is at work, see the smoke from the chimney?

Here are the plastic pipes that carry the sap from the tree to this container.

The raw sap waiting to be cooked soon.


This tractor and the sap collector vat goes down my road on a daily basis right now, collecting sap from the containers on the hill.

Processing machines.

I showed this evaporator before but then it wasn't at work. See the steam rising? It's cooking now.
Exhaust pipe.
This huge tractor acts as the generator for the sap evaporators.

11 comments:

marianne said...

No wonder it is so expensive (here), it takes a lot of work to make maple syrup.
Interesting Suki!
Thanks!

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing this, I never knew how this worked. A lot of sap needed to make one litre of syrup!
Andrea

Elizabeth said...

This was really interesting.
i never quite knew how they got that beautiful candy.
There is a stall which sells it in Union Square green market in Manhattan.
so glad your mother is doing better.

Annie said...

Oh my goodness, all that work for the rich and sweet taste of maple sugar melting on the tongue. Every year I gave my daughter maple leaves like you show in the first photo; it was one of her most desired gifts. But I never told her how much work went into producing them for her. Had I known, I'm sure she would have held them in even higher esteem.

Lynn Cohen said...

This is fascinating Suki, how interesting to be able to go there and see this whole process start to finish.
Now don't get too high on all that maple sugar! But I'd love just a taste! I salivated seeing those "cookies".

Cris, Artist in Oregon said...

wow.. no wonder they sell imatation maple syrup. It is expensive for a reason. Thanks for sharing that. I have a little bottle of maple syrup in a maple leaf bottle.. unopened. I just loveed the bottle. :)
It comes from Coombs family Farms in Bratteboro VT...That sound familiar?

sukipoet said...

Hello all. Yes it is a big process and the amount of sap available varies each year due to the weather. Kinda like farming.

I don't know that particular sugar house Cris but I've been to the town many times. There are lots of sugar houses up here and all of them are cooking right now. A spring rite.

human being said...

It's always amazing to know how things are made.
Thanks Suki for this nice post.

Mim said...

Looks like wonderful vermont to me. I lived in Plainfield for many years, loved it - especially mud season :)

Tess Kincaid said...

Thank you for posting this! You knew I would absolutely love it!! :)

Umā said...

i've grown fond of maple syrup and peanut butter on toast lately ;) and gave many containers of local maple syrup to people on my christmas list. it seems to always be a welcome gift!

maybe this year i'll photograph at a sugar shack around here. i take for granted that not everyone knows how it's produced, but i don't think i knew anything about it until i moved to western mass.