Native American legends say a chief came home one evening and stuck his tomahawk in a maple tree. The next day, he pulled it out and went hunting. Sap started running down the tree into a container of some sort.
The next day, his wife went looking for some water for a stew and found a waterlike liquid in the container under the tree. When she boiled the meat and veggies in the liquid it had a wonderful taste, thus the idea of cooking with, and cooking maple sap into syrup/sugar was born.
Or so goes the legend of several tribes, they say.
Kathy Hopkins has heard the legend, but she is not so sure. “The better the story, the less likely it is to be true,” she said.
Officially, Hopkins is an educator with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service. Unofficially, she is the maple syrup queen, the service’s expert on maple syrup and maple sugar.
“Whatever the origin, it is clear from early writings that the Native Americans boiled maple sap down into sugar. They may have put it in hollowed out wooden bowls and put hot stones in it to boil it.
In any event, the Native Americans taught the process to early European settlers, and these settlers began to substitute iron pots for wooden bowls.
This year, like most the years since its discovery, whatever its origin, New Englanders, Canadians, and others in areas where the nights are cold and the days are warm, have learned to boil the maple sap down into a wonder of wonders called maple syrup.
For Maine in 2009, more than 395,000 gallons of maple syrup were processed earning about $9 million for farmers and other processors.
In Lincoln County, Goranson’s Farm in Dresden is in full boil.
Rob Johanson and his wife, Jan Goranson have about 2000 taps pulling sap from trees and bringing it into their sugarhouse where it is boiled down into syrup. Last year, their farm produced about 500 gallons of processed syrup.
Visitors can taste their product and tour the sugarhouse on Maple Syrup Sunday, March 28 at their farm.
“Don’t forget to tell them to come and share pancakes with us on Sat., March 27,” said Johanson.
A special treat for the thousand or so visitors expected at the event is Damariscotta’s own Round Top Vanilla ice cream topped with Goranson’s Maple Syrup. There will be maple syrup for sale there, too.
In Jefferson, Hidden Fortune Farm on Bunker Hill Road, is also hosting visitors on March 28.
“We have a smaller operation, a backyard operation, but we will be open for visitors” said Donna Finch.
In Lincoln County it is not uncommon to find maple trees with tin buckets, or plastic milk jugs, hanging on tubes bored into their trunks.
Some larger operations have plastic tubes running from tree to tree leading to a large container collecting the sap.
Hopkins explains the sap is a product of the tree’s biochemical makeup.
Trees create starch through a process called photosynthesis and store it in their root system. In the spring, when the warm days combine with cold nights, the tree wakes up, converts the starch to sugar/sap and sends it up the trunk to the limbs. There it is used to make the leaves where it combines with sunlight to create starch and the process begins all over again.
Yes, it helps if you paid attention in high school biology class.
Anyone can tap and collect sap. All that’s needed is a big maple tree (at least 12 inches in diameter, please) and if wanting to tap it, buy the equipment at Louis Doe Hardware in Newcastle and other hardware stores, for about $10.
Using another complex formula, this one involving Pi (3.1416, etc.), and other ratios and diameters, again something supposedly learned in high school geometry class, anyone can safely put one tap into a 12-inch diameter tree and two into a tree with a diameter of 24 inches.
“In a backyard Sugarbush or stand of maple trees, you might find 30 to 40 taps. Large commercial operations may have 50,000 to 100,000-plus taps,” said Hopkins.
The rough formula is 40 gallons of sap is boiled down to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
At Goranson’s Farm, they are using a sophisticated wood fired boiler to boil the water out of the sap to create syrup.
You can do this at home with your own trees, but Hopkins issues a warning.
“I wouldn’t do it in the kitchen, unless you want to take the wall paper off the wall and mop a sticky goo off the stove,” she said.
“Better do it in a flat pan on the gas grill outside. You can finish it off inside, but you better do it outside. Trust me on this one,” she said.
