'Tis maple syrup making time!

This cool scene is on one of my jogging routes:

 

It is a bit more complex than the usual steel or aluminum buckets you see hanging from tapped red maples or sugar maple trees. Check it out...the taps are still there, but are all connected to this one big plastic bucket by a series of tubes. See the sap that has collected in the bottom of the bucket? And, you can actually HEAR the sap gurgling into the bucket. It is amazing! Who ever thought it'd be a good idea to try and get sap out of a tree and make it into something delicious??? Like many things from New England, it was probably the Native Americans who used their Yankee ingenuity to figure this out. It is a lot of work! It takes 10 gallons of sap to create one quart of syrup! Yikes - I would not have the patience, and I would gobble it all up too quickly! 

I found this pretty cool website, How to Make Maple Syrup, even with a little video to watch if you are interested in learning more about making syrup. If you want to make your own syrup, there are instructions for you to do it, too. There are many folks in New England who do it- just like my neighbors up the road.

I am a Putnamaniac because my neighbors make their own maple syrup!