While the Garden State is not considered a maple syrup state, the sap is flowing at the Great Swamp in Chatham Township, where on Saturday and Sunday, February 27 and 28–peak season–syrup-making events will be held at 1 and 2:30 p.m.
Admission is $3 per person age 3 and up.
The programs will teach people how to identify maple trees and tap them, and will also explain why winter and early spring is maple-sugaring season.
“We go tap one of the trees, collect sap from the bucket, head to the evaporator and people watch us cook down the sap into syrup,” says Mindy Schmitt, senior naturalist for the Morris County Park Commission. “At the end, people do a taste test of the different syrups.”
Sugaring season at the Great Swamp culminates with the Maple Sugar Festival on Saturday, March 5, from noon to 4 pm.
Festivities include a maple-history hike, tree-tapping and crafts and games. Maple products, including syrup, candy and doughnuts, will be offered for sale by their maker, the Neises Maple Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley.
This season’s relatively warm days (until Valentine’s weekend!) and cold nights are the perfect combination to create a healthy run of sap.
“We’ve been having a good sap run this year,” Schmitt says. “It gets cold, and then it gets mild again. The cold is essential for the sap to get sugar in it, but the thawing is essential for us to collect the sap. Last year we hardly collected anything. It was so cold and then it suddenly got warm too quickly.”
Native Americans used to cut the bark of maples near the base of the tree, peel back the bark and let the sap flow. But at Great Swamp they do it more in the manner of the first European settlers, who would drill a hole in the tree, insert a spigot and let the sap run into a bucket hanging from the end of the spigot.
Today’s commercial operations insert tubing into the tree and literally pump the sap straight to the evaporator.
“A lot of people think it comes out of the tree looking like syrup,” Schmitt says, “but it looks like water. You have to boil all that water off.”
Patience is required. Lots of it. And also lots of sap.
Three gallons of clear sap boiled for three to four hours yields just two ounces of amber syrup.
Depending on the type of maple tree, producing one gallon of syrup may require 25 to 40 gallons of sap.
Maple syrup used to be graded from A, the lightest in color and flavor, to B to C, the darkest in color and flavor.
But last year the USDA revised its system, denoting all syrups Grade A with the lightest being labeled golden, followed by amber, dark and very dark.
Schmitt explains that color “has to do with during what part of the season you extracted the sap. The earliest sap produces the lightest grade, and as the season progresses, it gets darker and darker.”
The lighter syrup has a purer sweetness, whereas the maple maple flavor intensifies as the syrup darkens.
“There’s a lot that people don’t know about maple syrup,” Schmitt says. “But it’s such an easy process. If people have maple trees, they could even be doing this at home on their stove.”
Additional Maple Sugaring Events:
Duke Farms, Hillsborough
Saturday and Sunday, March 19-20:
dukefarms.org
Environmental Education Center, Basking Ridge
Saturdays and Sundays, February 20 to March 27
somersetcountyparks.org
Nature Center at Washington Crossing State Park, Titusville
Saturday and Sunday, March 5-6 and 12-13:
state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/parks/washcros
Reeves-Reed Arboretum, Summit
Sunday, March 6
reeves-reedarboretum.org
Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary, Bernardsville
Saturday, March 12
njaudobon.org/centers/scherman
Stony Brook – Millstone Watershed Reserve, Pennington
Saturday, March 5
thewatershed.org
Tenafly Nature Center, Tenafly
Saturday, February 20; Sundays, February 28, March 6, 13, 20 and April 3
tenaflynaturecenter.org