GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It’s time to tap into the sweet taste of spring with maple syrup season at Blandford Nature Center.
“We actually live in a pretty special part of the world where you can find these trees," said Sidney Baxter, Marketing and Communications Manager at Blandford Nature Center. "And typically, when you find a sugar maple, you find an area of sugar maples. So that's why it's called a sugar bush."
How do you identify a maple tree?
The sugar maple leaf is on the Canadian flag, but also keep an eye out for the three B’s: The bark, branches and buds.
"The bark is, we like to tell children on field trips and stuff, that it kind of looks like Frosted Flakes, it looks a little gray and kind of has almost a frosty looking coating on it," Baxter said. "You can tell by the branches because they have opposite branches. So we like to say that it's almost like giving you a hug. And it's sweet, just like sugar. So that is another way. And then you can tell by the buds because they kind of look like party hats, and they're nice and brown.”
Tapping into a maple tree takes some muscle.
"You have to drill into it and just drill into the sapwood part of it, not into the heartwood, which gives the tree the strength and that's in the dead center of it," Baxter said. "But if you go about four inches in, you're gonna be in the sapwood."
Then insert the spile or spout into the hole and let the sap flow into a bucket.
Once you’ve collected enough, boil out the bad stuff.
"It's usually about eight hours to boil a good amount of sap," Baxter said. "So it takes actually 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup."
It’s a long process, but worth the effort for this sweet treat.
The time is now to tap those trees as we transition from late winter into early spring.
For more information on Blandford Nature Center's maple syrup programs, click here.
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