PHOTO OF THE WEEK, Maple Syrup

[Jack Schmidling]

It's that time of year again. We have made maple syrup and sometimes wine every year since we have lived out here. This year we tapped 23 Silver Maple trees and just started collecting the sap.

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[Jerry Avins]

I find it odd to see sap being collected with no snow on the ground.

I was 7 years old when I saw syrup being made (and enjoyed the candy made by drizzling it on the snow) and that early impression has been with me 66 years. The sap came to the steam shed in vats on sledges. Lifting the buckets off the spiles and over the edge of the vat was heavy work. Pulling the sledge was too. I only collected from the near trees. There were two larger vats on the sledge used to collect from the more remote ones. That one was horse drawn. Smart horse, too. He would just walk up to the next bucket and stop, wait until it was back on the spile, then move on. Any machine that could do that today would be called a robot.

Jerry

[Cheryl Isaak]

I had maple snow once as a kid - loved it. Real maple beats the junk on the supermarket shelves blindfolded and both hands tied behind it's back.

C

[Persephone]

I was thrilled when my New England hostess took me to the sugaring, maybe 10 years ago. Now I would finally get to see buckets nailed to trees in the story-book fashion! But this farmer used plastic tubes snaking from the trees to collecting tubes, etc. There were a few buckets-nailed-to-trees, but not many.

Didn't have a chance to see sap drawn on the snow in spirals, freezing into candy, like the story whose name I can't recall. Same problem as earlier message; no snow. But it was a kick anyway.

You got that right!!! Here (So.Cal) I get my maple syrup at Trader Joe. Much cheaper than health food/organic stores for same syrup.

Persephone

[Cheryl Isaak]

Have you tried maple sugar candy? Good stuff. C

[Ann]

Jack Schmidling expounded:

Plastic sap sacks - somehow that just ain't right. Otherwise very nice photos!