A great celebration of early spring

Visitors savor the sweet taste of Maple Sugaring Day at Breakheart, sampling syrup and popcorn

By Laura Eisener

Last Saturday, many visitors enjoyed the sights and flavors of Maple Sugaring Day at Breakheart Reservation.

Since native Americans first discovered how to use the sweet sap of the sugar maple trees, people have enjoyed the treat as concentrated syrup or boiled even further to make a flavorful sugar. Exhibits outside and inside the Visitor Center showed how sap was collected originally by native Americans and how increasingly efficient ways have been developed over time right up to the present day.

The sugaring season varies in length each year, lasting only as long as nights are below freezing and daytime temperatures are above. Once the temperatures have warmed sufficiently, the sap no longer flows as freely.

Visitors enjoyed opportunities to sample the sweet treat, with syrup straight from the evaporator in the gazebo, and popcorn inside the Visitor Center building. Over the early spring season when the sap is running, its color goes from nearly clear during the early part of the syrup season to a very dark amber brown just before the leaf buds break on the branches. While in the past the pale syrup, which was more similar to cane sugar in appearance and flavor, was valued more, we may have flipped our feelings and value the stronger maple flavor now.

People are not the only ones who enjoy the sweet taste of the maples – native Americans may have observed squirrels and other animals tasting the sap as it oozed from wounds on the trees and developed their own methods of gathering the sap and boiling it to make syrup and sugar.

The day was a great celebration of early spring and one of our most interesting harvests of the year.