Homemade Maple Syrup

What good fun we had today learning how to make maple syrup, and the history of making it, a free coarse offered by the state for folks that want to make their own.

It started with learning the trees and the way the Indians would make it, but the camera was being moody today.

So lets skip to the time of the settlers. These three photos show tools and methods used by self sufficient settlers to gather sap and cook it down.




After wwII and some people still use the pail method to gather their sap today.



A modern cooker, russian designed, which you cook the sap into syrup in three different compartments.




We spent the first hour in class learning the process and moved outside and walked through the stages of gathering, tools, and processing sap to syrup. There were only 4 groups today, the class is open three weeks a year to visitors. After all the info we were taught, we have booklets as guides they gave us, at the end of the class we were all given a half pint of maple syrup the park people had made this year.

It really isn't hard to do, you just need to learn how. I will be making some next year for my family, rather we are going to be making it for ourselves. I feel that one more step to being self sufficient is completed now.