Maple Sugaring Time

A traditional maple sugar shack built in 1954 in Hartland Four Corners, Vermont.



Farmer feeding wood into the maple sugar evaporator inside the family's Vermont sugar shack.
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When you buy real natural maple syrup (as opposed to factory produced artificially flavored corn syrup), you are supporting a way of life. In rural area through out New England, local farmers tap maple trees on their land and use traditional wood fired evaporators to boil and reduce the sap into sweet liquid gold. This sugar house in Hartland Four Corners was build in 1954. Four generations of have been involved in the annual spring ritual of harvesting and producing sweet syrup from maple sap in this hot and steamy sugar house.


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When a bucket fills with maple sap, the sap is collected and dumped into a holding tank. Once the holding tank is full, the sap is transported to a sugaring house, where all of the equipment is kept. The sap is poured into a maple syrup evaporator; that's where it is boiled down. The evaporator is crucial to the maple-syrup-production process. Maple sap is mostly water, and all of this water must be boiled out of the sap to concentrate the sugars into syrup.
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When the sap is poured into the maple syrup evaporator, it is first heated through with steam. The evaporator produces steam, and a series of pipes transports the cold sap through this steam. Once the sap is heated to almost boiling by the steam, it is delivered to large, flat pans where it is boiled until the water evaporates, leaving the sugary syrup behind. The syrup is then drawn into containers and filtered to remove any impurities. After it's filtered, the syrup is bottled and ready to consume.



Grandpa Bowers monitors the maple sap boiling in the evaporator as his grandson watches through the mist. His father who is now 94, built the classic Vermont maple sugar shack back in 1954, while his son is outside collecting the raw maple tree sap from the family land. Four generations of Bowers men involved in producing this authentic, natural, sweet liquid gold - pure Vermont Maple syrup. Hartland Four Corners, Vermont, March 2013.

State of the art evaporator for a large maple sugar operation.

Jimmy the caretaker at the Mt. Cube Sugar House at the Mt. Cube farm in Orford, New Hampshire. Preparing the evaporator for the upcoming sugaring season where watery maple sugar sap will be boiled down into sticky sweet maple syrup.

The "old school" sugar house at Mt. Cube.

Sweet Steam" was taken in a Woodstock, Vermont Sugar Shack during the mapling season when the sap from maple trees is collected and boiled down to make pure, natural, sweet maple syrup.

No ingredients are added. It takes 24 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. The maple sugaring season occurs right around the first week of spring when the days are warm and the nights are cold. This is when the sap runs.

Congrats,Edward.
What a fine,informative,original body of work.
It's really interesting to see Maple Syrup production first hand. It's a fine old industry, known world-wide.
(When we moved to England, we immediately missed two things....Maple Syrup, and Mayo)

The "real thing" is sooo good! Nothing beats an original,I guess..

There was a very interesting article in the Burlington Free Press about two weeks ago about taking the top off of young trees and pretty much vacunming up sap all season, and then taking the tree out completely. The idea being that you're getting the sap but also thinning the sugar bush in general to give other trees more space to grow.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/green-mountain/2015/02/14/vermont-maple-syrup-producers-attempt-even-higher-yields/23427433/

I've recorded and deleted more RAW files from here than I care to imagine. A decade of "does not meet my standards". I envisioned this old dilapidated Sugar House exactly as I FINALLY came to experience it on this chilly autumn morning.



This one is from over in Reading Vermont.

Great collection of work, ED..love the sepia effect...pays tribute to this fine, old art.
and thanks for the lesson! I taught school at Maple Elementary for a few years on Maple Road in the middle of Maple Tree country....they tapped the trees in the fall and school was out all week because the trees lined the main street and surrounded the school. I had no idea it was done in the spring as well. That's what happens when you grow up on asphalt!

There's nothing like the taste of real maple syrup. I use it as a sugar substitute in a lot of things for the taste and for health reasons.

--Roz Abellera

Only in the spring in these parts.

They have started to tap birch trees also. Birch syrup is not as sweet and is being used by gourmet chefs. It takes a lot more sap to make birch syrup and as such it much more expensive.

I have one of that same sugar house as Thomas. Its not far from Jenne Farm.



Notice the large stack of wood. It takes a lot of heat to boil down suger. More modern operations use natural gas.

Making Maple Syrup in March is a Canadian tradition supplying 85% of the world
The Elmira Maple Syrup Festival held in March in Elmira Ontario Canada draws a huge crowd of people from near and far and is not to be missed

What wonderful photographs!!! I love real maple syrup!

I don't have any but we make our own every year... last year at this time we were in the thick of it... today I dug out 600 feet of driveway w/ 3 feet of hard pack with a shovel to get back in... next weekend we will tap trees but based on the weather we are still a couple of weeks away from the trees running...

I have a series of videos on my youtube channel on our little setup : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyfApCP844Q&list=PLW43fxt8G5fEe4-zAAqqVFZwi1kGukrTv

I cut and split (by hand) 10 cord of firewood to get ready last summer... while we are boiling we will be dropping trees we marked last summer for next years batch... before I started making my own maple syrup I thought the real stuff was expensive... now I think its cheap...

There is a maple festival held every March in Highland County VA (the farthest place south you can make syrup) that draws upwards of 20,000+ in a county that doesn't even have a shopping center. My favorites are the homemade glazed maple doughnuts.

Edward I love the photos and the story but I have a confession to make (just between the two of us). I have never eaten maple syrup. There I have said it, now I will go back into therapy.

I think you have to try it on home cooking otherwise foods don't exist to buy that have it except for a few items. We do have these marvelous maple leaf shortbread cookies in the dollar store that have the real maple/sugar filling, they are good. I'm sure they are great on pancakes but that seems extravagant.

I don't even know if I can get it here in Italy! My husband says it is delicious so he is very happy to look for it in the supermarkets!

Dorothy you should buy some (the real stuff) via mail order and try it out. Skip the artificial stuff.

Love your photos, Ed! A a lovely surprise to see it here because I love all the sweetness that surrounds this time of year - and I don't just mean the taste..

On the street where I live is a family farm that has been producing maple syrup for over 90 years. When I first moved here, I got to know the family and regularly visited the Sugarhouse with my young daughter and we got to taste samples while they were cooking it. Such a fascinating process, and extremely labor intensive!

It's charming to still see the sap buckets hung from trees all around us and that there are still farmers who use their beautiful Belgian horses in the collection process because they can maneuver best with them in the woods.

I am not in Vermont, but in Geauga County in Norteast Ohio - and this area is renowned for its pure maple syrup. Similar to fine wines, pure maple syrup gets its flavor from the geographic region, and even the syrup produced in Northern Ohio has a different flavor than syrup produced in Southern Ohio.

In the spirit of sharing information, I thought I'd put in a plug for this area and for the center of it, the little town of Chardon, Ohio, where this is a really big deal every spring and where the oldest and largest maple syrup festival in the country is held, now in its 84th year.

Not as well known as Vermont, but Ohio is the 5th largest producer, and there are only about a dozen states in the US that have the climate and condition for sugar maples and maple syrup production.

Wherever it is produced, it is a joy to see the small family producers and it is a treat for us to be able to buy their jewel of a product directly from them.

Thank you for starting this, Ed!

Real maple syrup over vanilla ice cream. Best dessert ever.

Only thing better is a warm brownie or blondie as the bottom layer.
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Great to here stories about experiencing mapling close up and personal.

Maple Martini's are great, also cocktails with made with bourbon are great with maple - like a Maple Old Fashioned or Maple Manhattan.

http://madtini.com/8-maple-syrup-cocktails-that-will-tap-your-taste-buds/

I can attest to this one:

Maple Kiss
Ingredients

2 1/2 oz Rye Whiskey
3/4 oz Chambord
1/4 oz pure maple syrup
Preparation
Combine the ingredients in a cocktail shaker with several ice cubes. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Add a fresh raspberry as garnish.

( :

I know this is obviously an autumn scene, but I found this very obscured vintage Sugar House in the Northeast Kingdom of VT last year. Perusing the location, I decided to add the rustic wagon wheel as foreground.



This historic Sugar House was disassembled from it's original Vermont location and reassembled in the Historic district of Southbury CT way back in 1961. I was invited to photograph the location after the property owner noticed my name and state published in a New England themed magazine. I had NO idea this place existed, really awesome opportunity.

Today I decide to go out and see some if I could get some new mapling shots. Ended up getting stuck in some soft snow!

Luckily it was only a short walk to the country store. I enlisted a strapping young lad to help me out and bought him lunch. That was great until he took off and I got stuck again! Luckily a father and son snow mobile duo arrived just in time -- helped dig and guide me out.

This is on Cloudland drive out of Woodstock heading to Pomfret. One of the most photographed farms in Vermont is on this road. Someone said it was owned by Stephen Tyler of Arrowsmith at some point.

This is from our maple syrup operation... I have a couple of other photos of from our setup and a couple of youtube videos here : http://www.bethnchris.com/2015/03/22/sugar-shack-time/