Week of March 9, 2025 – March 15, 2025
by Lizzy Suzedell, Environmental Educator
Have you been noticing any early signs of spring lately? Here at The Woods, we found skunk cabbage almost ready to bloom on the Griffiths Trail, we’ve heard many singing cardinals and flocks of snow geese flying by, and we watched much of our snow melt with the warmer temperatures. These changes in the weather got us very excited for one of our favorite activities to end the winter with- maple sugaring!
Last week with one of our Trail School groups, we set out with some tools to “tap” a few of the sugar maple trees. Most of them knew that maple syrup doesn’t just come directly out of the tree; we need to get sap first. Sap is what carries water, nutrients, and sugar through a tree. During this time of year when the days are becoming longer and warmer, sap flows up through the trees’ trunks and towards the buds, supplying them with the energy they need to bloom. We can tap maple trees for sap until the temperatures get too warm (not dipping below freezing at night) and buds are opening.
Before we could use our tools, we needed to make sure we identified the right trees! We looked out for gray bark with long, vertical, platey cracks with orange underneath. Their branches grow opposite from each other, with brown, pointy buds at the end. After finding some sugar maples, we figured out which direction was south, since that side of the tree gets the most sun. Next, we chose a spot on the south side to drill a hole; it needed to be several inches away from any other holes from past years. After drilling an inch into the tree, we hammered in the spile, which is like a faucet. Sap was flowing immediately!
We tasted some sap. It was just barely sweet, and it didn’t taste like maple syrup at all yet. We added buckets to collect the sap with covers to keep out animals and debris. Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to check on our little sugarbush. Soon, we’ll bring out our evaporator to boil the sap. When enough water is removed, it will turn into delicious maple syrup!
Do you have a favorite end-of-winter tradition?