A Tasty Tradition Continues

The crowd cheered as the drops ran into the bucket at Maple Sugarin’ Day at Breakheart Reservation

By Laura Eisner

Maple Sugarin’ Day at Breakheart attracted quite a crowd on Saturday (March 8), as people of all ages from the surrounding area flocked to see this iconic New England tradition demonstrated and an opportunity to taste some sap straight from the tree and syrup fresh from the evaporator. Visitor Services Supervisor Jessica Narog-Hutton gave some tips on how to identify a sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and where to tap for a good flow of sap, and then she demonstrated drilling a hole and inserting a spile. The trick is to insert the spile into the xylem just behind the bark to find the vessels where the sap is flowing, not too deep into the wood.

Jessica certainly hit the sweet spot, since sap began to flow immediately. The crowd cheered as the drops ran into the bucket. Many of the visitors were delighted when they caught a drop or two of sap on their fingertips and tasted the sweet stuff directly from the tree. Before the boiling process, the raw sap is more watery than sugary, but there is still a hint of flavor.

A bit farther along in the picnic area, Amanda Garms had a pot of sap boiling over a fire, and wood smoke gave a distinctive scent to the air. Amanda explained why our seasons and changing temperatures cause changes in the processes inside the trees. Through the warmer months, the leaves are busy making sugars, but in the fall when temperatures drop, the sap expands and cracks the wood in the tree, so around the same time the leaves drop the sap runs down into the roots for the winter. As daytime temperatures come up above freezing in early spring, the sap runs back up throughout the trunk and branches, and at this time it can be harvested and boiled down for syrup.

She showed off a shallow platter made from a trunk slice which would have been used to hold the hot boiled syrup. The shallow design provides for more surface area, which allows for more evaporation as it cools.

At the gazebo, Dylan Symonds presided over the evaporator, where small cups of syrup were provided for taste tests. Maple syrup and maple sugar are very popular products of the colder parts of North America, and the production season varies somewhat from year to year because once the night temperatures rise above freezing the sap stops running up the trunk.

Jonathan Perry, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag community and an expert in traditional woodlands Native American art, demonstrated traditional methods of making maple sugar and showed off a table full of Native American baskets, birch bark products, clay pots and jugs, snowshoes and other traditional handmade items produced from trees. Chatting with the crowd about many achievements of Native Americans, Perry also talked about a famous member of the Narragansett tribe, Ellison “Tarzan” Brown, who won the Boston Marathon in 1936 and 1939.

Leah Hopkins, the Indigenous People’s Partnership Coordinator of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation’s Office of Cultural Resources, described many of these items to the crowd inside the Christopher P. Dunne Visitor Center. The Maple Sugarin’ Process tour was sponsored by the state Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR) and cosponsored by the Friends of Breakheart Reservation.