Bucket method of tapping
For most, the first couple months of the new year are seen as times of cold and dormancy, but for me February is steadily becoming the busiest time of year. A time for teaching, a time for learning, a time for harvest.
Many of us know Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) from the tasty syrup that accompanies our pancakes, but there’s so much amazing science and history behind that tasty breakfast condiment. Whether it’s dripping into a bucket or a network of tubing all maple sap flows when the season begins to change from winter to spring. Maples have pockets of CO2 in their cell membranes that shrink with the cold and expand when they warm. This alternation of daytime temps of over 32°F and nighttime temps below freezing and back again causes a change of pressure inside the tree causing sap to flow up towards the tree canopy in cold temps then back down again as it warms. If this seems backwards, don’t worry, unto this day there is still a debate amongst scientists as to just how exactly Maples are able to do this and how the change in pressure during cold versus warm temps affect sap-flow. Once temps reach steadily above freezing overnight the pressure inside the tree will stablize and sap-flow will lessen, buds on the tree will also start to open which results in off flavors. This means that those who wish to partake in the sugary gift Maples give each year have to work quickly. And if hiking out into the woods during the cold months already seems like a lot of work keep in mind it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup! But as North America’s only native sugar source it’s well worth the effort.
So how did we come to learn that the Maple has this gift to give? Many stories surround how Native Americans first learned of the sugary liquid, every culture has their own folklore and history surrounding the Maple. One that stands out is that Native Peoples watched the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker woodpecker (Sphyrapicus varius) drill a line of holes in maples and actually drink the sap flowing from these holes. Sapsuckers will also wait for insects to be attracted to the sugary sap and get a nice source of protein to go with their tasty drink.
Native Peoples took this sap, utilizing various methods to evaporate the water. These include both hot and cold evaporation. Remember, for sap to flow it needs to get cold at night, so if it’s already going to get cold enough to freeze water, why not let Mother Nature do some of the work for you? Since sugar freezes at a lower temperature than water, sap would be left in collection vessels overnight and the accumulated ice on top would be discarded and the resulting liquid would be more concentrated in sugar. The next step would be to boil the sap, first in earthenware, then copper and cast-iron once they began trading with colonials.
David Williams at Stratford Ecological Center
Keep in mind the amount of sap in takes to make syrup and understand that Native Americans were actually taking the process even further and making Maple Sugar! They’d either pour the molten sugar, which would be much thicker than syrup, almost to the consistency of caramel, into birch bark cones to harden, similar to piloncillo, or they would press them into wooden molds to make cakes/bricks. To make granulated sugar the warm sugar is poured into wooden troughs and agitated with wooden paddles to cause the sugar to crystallize as it cools. It’s easy to imagine the amount of work this would be every year, which is why the term ‘Sugar Camp’ exists. Native Peoples would gather their whole community together and the process of making enough sugar to last the entire year would be a communal effort. This would be a time of celebration: Maple Sugar is the first crop of the new year and all the hard work it is to gather the sap, cut the wood for fuel, cook the sap down to sugar, and so on doesn’t seem like work when it is a community wide celebration of the cold receding and spring fast approaching. All of this wasn’t just for a tasty sugar, no, in fact Maple is incredibility healthy for you! That’s right, sugar that’s healthy! It’s an anti-inflammatory, the lowest on the glycemic index score of any table sugar/syrup, it’s high in vitamins and minerals including Potassium, Calcium, and Riboflavin, and it hosts half a dozen antioxidants.
So the next time you think of Maple as a fall flavor, thanks to advertising campaigns and Autumnal inspired coffee beverages that aren’t pumpkin-spice, take a second and remember that Maple is the taste of spring. A time to celebrate North America’s native sugar.
*Words to Know from those who call Ohio home*
- Haudenosaunee: Wáhta: Maple, means “Leader”
- Ojibwe: Aninatig or Ininaatig, pronounced (a-néh-na-teg): maple. Iskigamizigan: Sugar Bush or Sugar Camp.
- Algonquin (spoken by the Shawnee): Sinsibuckwud: Maple Sugar
- Lena Lenape: Annxinnamenshi: Maple