Maple Syrup

Spring in Vermont means maple syrup. Blue tubing winds its way from tree to tree while warming days with cold nights gets the sap moving. Only a few individuals still use the old-fashioned sap buckets.

Vermont celebrates maple syrup season with a state-wide open house at places that are sugaring. This year cold days returned to create a pause. Sap stopped running, but the sugarers were happy because they figured that in the long run this would just extend the season.

Mary and I wanted to have breakfast at one of the sugar houses which is also a restaurant. We like their walnut pancakes and so we headed out of Rutland towards Killington. That isn't chimney smoke in the picture above, but steam.

The restaurant was crowded. Cars had overflowed the parking lot. It was as if everyone in Vermont had seen that steam! We decided to go downstairs to see where it was coming from and then find someplace else to eat.

Two fellows were feeding wood into the fire to keep the vat boiling. Later I wondered if they were just boiling water because every other place I stopped had run out of sap and were waiting for it to run again. After all, that steam was creating a great business for the restaurant!

Meanwhile, Mary and I ended up eating at the local diner...no ambiance!

On my way home I made a detour to stop at a sugar house near Ludlow. They were offering sugar on snow. All these years in Vermont and I'd never had this sweet treat before.Yummy.

At the same time I got to catch up on what two of my former students were doing. They are having a fabulous time in England. The older girl is studying there and her sister was about to visit.

On my way home I noticed that the family near the beginning of my road were also having an open house at their sugar shack. I stopped to say hello and see their operation. Outside just looked like a garage, but inside was impressive. They have a double vat system. The steam from boiling the bottom vat manages to heat the upper vat enough to get it boiling as well! They can produce 60 gallons of syrup each hour.

Family and friends were there to offer visitors a variety of maple treats. Since I'd already had the sugar on snow, I was more interested in how they made the maple syrup...

This is their reverse osmosis machine. The sap goes through this machine, which removes 75% of the water content, before boiling even begins.

When their business got so big that they were burning 40 cords of wood (a cord is 4' high, 4' deep, and 8' long), they switched to oil. When the sap is running, they use 25 gallons of oil each hour.

It takes 55 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, and 1 gallon of syrup is what I took home.