Hello everyone
Anytime between late febuary and now each year here in North Guilford Connecticut the air is sweet and sugary and sugar maple groves are littered with tin buckets. Its maple sugar season the frost is thawing days are warmer and the sap is flowing. It is a great joy to sit around a warm sugar house boiling sap for some of the last cold nights of winter. The aroma of the boiling sap is an amazing experience it is powerful. Maybe even more powerful than the steam of a homade bowl of chicken noodle soup on a cold damp day. Usually at my friend petes sugar house there are two necesities a bowl of ice cream drizzled in hot fresh syrup and a cup of sap tea fresh of the boiler. Now anyone can start making sap a couple of taps and buckets are easy to come by in New England. But the hard part is it takes many hours to boil 40 gallons of sap into 1 gallon of syrup with proper equiptment and even longer without improper equipment but it can be done.
This post was inspired by petes sugarhouse tea, my lack of boiling equipment and my growing desire to incorprate raw food into my diet. Here at the house we skip the boiling process and drink raw sap. A maple tree stores nutrients and sugar in there roots all winter to start new growth each spring. I am not a biochemist but the indians drank maple water and maple sugar water contains the nutrients and sugar that start life. This is super water. It is high in nutrients it contains vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, amino acids, antioxidants, prebiotics and electrolytes.
Get started taping Sugar Maple or Even Birch trees in your back yard this march, many trees produce several gallons a day for several weeks. Firt identify a maple tree they have maple shaped leave make samara for seed and have opposite cone shaped leaf buds. Dont be confused with relatives red, norway or silver maple which more ofteen grow near swampy areas. Second gather a Tap, Bucket, Drill and small hammer. When taping you only need to drill 2-2.5 inche slighty angled downward into the tree to get past the bark and into the xylem and phloem cells that transport sap up and down the tree. Then tap your tap into the hole lightly not to make a crack in the hole. Hang your bucket and watch the tree drip. Drink sap fresh it is raw and can spoil just like fresh unpasturized juice. One tap should keep you hydrated for several weeks. This is seasonal so take advantage this febuary, march.
Sincerly,
Tyler Christensen