Maple Sugaring - So Sweet!
It’s arrived: it’s every Bostonian’s favorite time of year. After exactly two snows, you walk outside into the forty degree sunshine and declare, “it’s finally spring!” We all know truly warm weather is months away, but the non-frigid wintery air is a sign of hope.
The warm days and cold nights of March in the north east are the perfect weather not only for convincing yourself you only need a light jacket, but for our youthers new favorite natural food: maple syrup. Maple trees store their water and food supply in their roots in the cold, and send the supplies up to the branches when it’s warm to create leaves and buds. Early March weather, hovering just above 32 degrees, is the ideal time to collect sap from the sugar maples at Drumlin Farms because you can catch the sap in transit in the trunk.
Each programming day this week, our leadership staff picked up youthers at 2pm to make the 40 minute drive out to Drumlin Farms. Located near Lincoln, Massachusetts, Drumlin operates as both a farm and a wildlife sanctuary. They offer educational programs for all ages, preschool to adult groups, such as birding, animal agriculture, and maple syruping. We were greeted outside by friendly Mass Audubon staff and jumped into our tour for the day.
Our youthers were energetic and engaged, asking lots of questions about tree identification and their new favorite natural treat. They were also surprised to find snow on the ground, and reveled in the satisfying crunch of their steps. We gathered sap from tapped maple trees and took turns carrying 5-gallon buckets to the pond house.
Here, we gathered around Drumlin’s brand new evaporator. It was recently installed and will be a much more energy efficient way to collect maple syrup at the farm. Because the evaporator wasn’t hot, we could touch inside to discuss how to boil down the sap. Inside the pond house, we practiced manually drilling holes and taste-tested sap at several stages of boiling. While straight sap from the trees tasted mostly like water, “maple tea” was a tinge sweeter, and “maple soup” was thick and sugary. Everyone’s favorite was, of course, classic New England maple syrup.
On Tuesday and Thursday, our Hennigan and Kenny 6th graders had the opportunity to peek inside the sheep barn to see the new baby lambs. Lambing had just begun this week, meaning we saw many baby sheep less than a week old.
Elevate Youth is proud to offer our educational outdoor programs to our school and family partners in Boston. Through providing snacks, transportation, and trained guides, we are supporting our community by getting them outside. We’re glad to have supportive partnerships through the Thomas J. Kenny School, James W. Hennigan School, and Boys and Girls Club of Dorchester.
