Teacher:
Jeff Dean
Tree Tapping
by Adrienne S.
A Maple Syrup Festival is held annually in Arlington, Ohio in mid-March. There you get to see and learn about tapping trees for sap. Tree tapping, a process of inserting a hole into a maple tree to obtain sap, was first done by the Native Americans. They cut a hole in the maple tree and let the sap run down a pitch of hollowed-out log. This tradition of tapping trees for syrup continues today.
Maple tree tappers may still use metal spiles and buckets to collect the sap from the tree. This process has been modernized in recent years to a system using vacuum tubing and fittings. To make one gallon of syrup, you need to have 45-50 gallons of sap. According to long time “tree tapper” Charles Crates, to purify the sap you first need to put it through a filter many times. Then, you use a reverse osmosis machine and finally you put the sap through an evaporator to condense it.
The Maple Syrup Festival is held once a year from the 10 the of February to the middle of March. I hope you are able to come sometime to this very “sweet” event!
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