Maple Sugar Field Trip

Today we went to a tree farm to learn how maple syrup is made. This is the owner describing how he puts the tubes together. He has to replace them frequently because they get chewed up by animals, deer and coons, etc.



With help from Kayleigh he is showing how he puts in the pegs that the sap comes through. First he drills the hole.


Then he inserts the peg and hammers it in with a piece of hard maple. (A hammer would break the peg.)


He has other woods where he taps the trees and trucks in the sap. Here he is siphoning out the sap to his holding tank.


Stoking the fire.


This is the sap almost ready to boil. He uses a reverse osmosis system that takes out about 80% of the water so it doesn't take as long to turn to syrup.


The syrup goes into this barrel when it is ready.


Different grades of syrup.


He has a few trees that he hangs bags on to gather the sap.


Most of his trees are tapped and connected to these hoses that take the sap directly to the holding tanks.


He had a chainsaw carver there for our entertainment.