Maple Syrup is very sweet! We learned how to make it on our field trip to Goranson's Farm. You need to have a Sugar Maple tree. If you have lots of them it is called a "Sugarbush."

First you drill a hole in the trunk of the tree. You put in a spout called a spile. This process is called "tapping" the tree. You hang a bucket under it. The sap will drip from the spile into the bucket. It drips slowly. It looks like water.

You can only tap trees for three or four weeks in the Spring when the days are warm and the nights are cold. Sometimes people use tubes or plastic bags to collect the sap. Everyday you collect all of the sap in a giant gathering tank. Once you start you can't stop. You take it to the Sugarhouse or Sugarshack to boil off the water.

The sap gets dumped into a huge evaporator which is heated by a big woodstove. You need a lot of wood! It is very hot and steamy in there! Boiling the sap makes the water in it evaporate. Then when it reaches 219 degrees you have maple syrup! Then you filter out the "sugar sand" which is made of minerals.

The final step is bottling and grading the syrup. It is "graded" according to how light or dark it is. The syrup goes into bottles and is ready to sell OR........EAT!!!!!Yum, Yum!!