Luke Judge

Maple syrup fests find gold in them there trees

by Annie Alleman For Sun-Times Media Mar 3, 2011 02:32PM

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onathan Lorenz (center) of Burlington and others get first-hand instruction on tapping for syrup from Kane County Naturalist Volunteer, Kim Haag (right) of Campton Hills on Sunday during the Maple Sugaring Fest held in the Tekawitha Woods in St. Charles . | File Photo

Here are some maple tapping events coming up:

1 to 4 p.m. March 6 at Brewster Creek Forest Preserve, 6N921 Route 25 in St. Charles.

1 to 4 p.m. March 13 at Johnson’s Mound Forest Preserve, 41W600 Hughes Road, Elburn

Call 630-232-5980 or visit kaneforest.com.

Fullersburg Woods, 3609 Spring Road, Oak Brook

3:30 to 4:30 p.m. March 4

Families can hike to the sugar bush to collect the sap from sugar maple trees. For ages 6 and up with an adult; cost is $5 per family. Call 630-850-8110. dupageforest.org.

Get Sticky! Maple Syrup Sundays

Noon to 4 p.m. March 13 and 20.

Fullersburg Woods, 3609 Spring Road, Oak Brook. Call 630-850-8110 or visit dupageforest.org.

This free, all-ages program lets visitors discover the secret of turning tree sap into syrup. Registration not required.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 12-14

Kline Creek Farm, 1N600 County Farm Road, West Chicago. Call 630-876-5900. dupageforest.org.

In this free program, visitors can see for themselves how pioneers tapped trees and boiled the collected sap into maple syrup and sugar, then try to tap a tree themselves. Registration not required.

9 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 19

Red Oak Nature Center on Route 25, one mile north of Route 56, 2343 S. River St., North Aurora. Call 630-897-1808 or visit foxvalleyparkdistrict.org.

Watch demonstrations of how maple sap is turned into maple syrup, and learn how people and animals through the ages have tapped maple trees for sap. Maple-themed snacks and hot beverages will be sold. Free, all ages. no registration required.

10 a.m. to noon March 6, 13, 20 and 27

Morton Arboretum, 4100 Route 53, Lisle. Call 630-719-2468 or visit mortonarb.org.

See how a maple tree is tapped, how the sap is turned into syrup and which types of maples make the best syrup. Dress for the weather. $20 (discounts available for Arboretum members).

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 12, 1 to 4 p.m. March 13

Naper Settlement, 523 S. Webster St., Naperville. Call 630-420-6010 or visit napersettlement.museum.

See the time-honored method of collecting sap the old-fashioned way and sample real maple syrup. $9, $8 seniors, $6.50 kids 4-17.

Pioneer Festival and Pancake Breakfast

8 a.m. to noon March 26 and 27

Pilcher Park Nature Center, 2501 Highland Park Ave., Joliet. Call 815-741-7277 or visit jolietpark.org

Enjoy pancakes, sausage and pure maple syrup. Afterwards, watch syrup making demonstrations or try your hand at pioneer chores with the re-enactors. $8.50 adults, $5.50 child.

Festival of the Sugar Maples

10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 5 and 6

Coral Woods Conservation Area, 7400 Somerset, Marengo. Call 815-338-6223 or visit mccdistrict.org.

Hear how maple syrup was made in the past, learn how sap is collected and see how maple syrup is made at the evaporator house. Free tours leave every 15 minutes and involve a half-mile hike.

For many folks, the first true sign of spring isn’t a robin or a groundhog or even a day when the temperature’s above freezing.

no, the first sign is a slow, clear drip coming from a maple tree. It means that the carbs the tree’s roots have been storing all winter are making their way north because the days are getting warmer, explained Angelique Dunning, associate manager of youth and family programs at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle.

“Sap is food the tree created last summer. The carbohydrates are stored in the tree as starch, and it turns to sugar. The sugar of black maple has highest concentration of sugar,” she said. “As temperatures warm up, pressure causes the sap to rise. The best time to tap a tree is this time of year, when the sugar has concentrated over the winter. you want to have cold nights below freezing and warm days (with temperatures) in the 40s.”

Syrup is essentially evaporated sap, and it takes “a very long time” to get to the good stuff, she said.

Many of the park districts and nature centers throughout the area are hosting maple syrup events in March to teach visitors about how maple sap becomes maple syrup.

Debbie Greene, superintendent for the Joliet Park District, says it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.

“That’s why it’s so expensive when you buy pure maple syrup — it really is labor intensive. mrs. Butterworth doesn’t have to do that,” she said.

The Joliet Park District is holding a Pioneer Fest and Pancake Breakfast on March 26 and 27. The fest demonstrates pioneer life and syrup making, she said.

They’ll show visitors how to make maple syrup the pioneer method, the Native American method and the more modern method. Spoiler alert: the Native Americans had to heat rocks, the pioneers used a big pot, and modern folks employ a metal evaporator.

“We have maple ice cream making, we make butter, we teach them to do chores like (pioneers),” she said. “There are a lot of things going on during the Pioneer Fest.”

The one question she always gets asked is how did people figure out if they gauged a hole in a maple tree and reduced the liquid that came out of it, they would get something sweet?

“One story I have heard is that sap was coming out of a tree and it froze, and a kid broke it off, tasted it and said it was sweet,” she said. “It’s minutely sweet.”

The Morton Arboretum offers a maple tapping event every Sunday in March, Dunning said. They’ll teach guests what kind of tree to look for (preferably 10-12 inches in diameter) and where to put the tap. Once the hole is drilled, they put a spout called a spile in the hole, and the sap will begin dripping out.

“Sap looks like water. we let them taste it and some can detect a sweetness and others can’t,” she said. “We’ll give people a drill and they can try their hand tapping a log. Then we’ll show everyone the process of cooking it down.”

Of course, they’ll let people try some full-fledged maple syrup.

“It’s a lot of work, that’s why it’s so expensive,” Dunning said. “An average tree will give you six to 10 gallons of sap in a season. It would take four of our trees to get a gallon of syrup.”

The Naper Settlement is hosting Maple Sugaring Days on March 12-13. Donna DeFalco, marketing manager at Naper Settlement, calls the event the kickoff to spring.

“Maple Sugaring Days is the cure for cabin fever, so come out and see our cabin,” she said. “We demonstrate how Naperville’s early settlers tapped maple trees to make maple syrup and maple sugar,” she said.

The perfect condition for tapping maple trees is warm days and cool nights, because that forces the sap up from the roots, she explained.

The settlement’s costumed villagers drill a hole in a maple tree and insert a tap that allows the clear sap to run into a bucket. Then they demonstrate how the sap is boiled and reduced down to make the thick maple syrup, she said.

In keeping with the pioneer spirit, they will also have activities harkening back to the days of yore.

“We’ll have a yoke and bucket so people can see what it is like to carry their water home,” she said. “We’ll also have an opportunity for people to learn a dance popular at the time called the Virginia Reel. We’ll have David Corbett from Battlefield Balladeers playing 19th century music to dance the Virginia Reel to.”

The Forest Preserve District of Kane County will hold Maple Sugaring Days on March 6 and 13. District naturalists will demonstrate how to tap a maple tree, and visitors will get the chance to try drilling and setting a tap, said Jaclyn Olson, a naturalist with the forest preserve. They will be able to watch sap as it simmers over an open fire and thickens to syrup.

“We want to give people the opportunity to see the process of maple sugaring,” she said. “We have several stations set up that take people through that process. And you will get to taste maple syrup as well.”

Kids will get the chance to practice drilling holes into logs.

The event, she said, is very popular, even in bad weather.

“People this time of year are itching to get outdoors and see that spring really is coming, and this really is one of the first signs,” she said. “Plants are waking up from being dormant over the winter. People are excited to be outside and see the process. Kids love using the drills and tasting the sap and then tasting the real thing.”

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Before Dentyne Ice or Double Bubble, there was DanielsAdirondack Spruce Gum.

Made from the hardened sap of red spruce trees, the New Yorkcompany was one of several producers in the United States in thelate 19th century that profited from the Victorian fad of gumchewing.

“A lot of people in the Adirondack Park supplemented their incomeby collecting spruce sap,” said Laura Rice, chief curator at theAdirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake.

A century-old pole-like device used to harvest the chewable resinis on display in “Let’s Eat: Adirondack Food Tradition,” whichopens Friday and runs through Oct. 18 at the museum.

“It was handmade out of an old tin can,” Rice said, pointing to theodd contraption.

The practical object is one of many artifacts featured in theexhibition, which celebrates the history of food in theregion.

Although gum chewing remains popular, spruce gum became a footnotein history in the early 20th century after companies began usingchicle tree gum (think Chiclets) from Mexico and South America andlater made the switch to butadiene-based synthetic rubber.

The story of gum and other culinary tales unfold in the exhibit,which features more than 300 pieces from the museum’s collection,plus a few items on loan.

“We have a lot of food-related things,” Rice said of theinstitution’s vast depository. “It’s a great topic. We all like toeat.”

Starting with American Indian relics that date back as far as 1000B.C., “Let’s Eat” documents food in a region with an environmentthat limits cultivation and transportation.

Eating in the Adirondacks never should be taken for granted.

The exhibit focuses on the diverse mix of people that have beencrucial to the development of the Adirondack Park – from settlerswho lived off the land to wealthy camp owners.

“Most families would have had a small garden to help feed theirfamilies,” Rice said.

An antique seed spreader attests to the grueling task many oncefaced when growing their own vegetables.

“You could walk along and drop the seeds rather than bend over,”Rice said.

The simple innovation was a vast improvement, although farmingalways proved difficult in the area’s harsh climate.

Butter was a precious commodity, and the dairy product often wasused as a form of currency, according to Rice.

“It was very typical for Adirondack families to have a butterchurn. They could trade butter for things they needed,” shesaid.

An ornate early 20th-century “Grand Gold Coin” cook stove remains abeauty, but its aesthetic appeal belies the knowledge required tooperate it.

Cooking on a wood-fired stove was an acquired skill that tookpractice. No two heated exactly the same.

“When someone said you were a good cook, that was a realcompliment. Cooking required much more than following a recipe backthen,” Rice said.

An “Insurance Gasoline Stove” from the same era was seen as a vastimprovement over previous liquid fuel models.

The producer, Dayton Manufacturing Company, promoted the fact thatit “can’t possibly explode.”

In addition to focusing on daily life, the exhibit looks at thegrander side of food in the region. From fine dining in fancyhotels to special meals served at the Great Camps of the elite,”Let’s Eat” demonstrates the important role cuisine played in theAdirondack experience.

Hotels often grew their own produce and bought meat from regionalhunters. Some properties near railroads were able to acquire moreexotic ingredients.

Memorabilia, including serving pieces and menus, attest to the mixof natural charm and grandeur.

A butter tray, circa 1900 from Camp Uncas in Raquette Lake, isshaped like a turtle and made of birch bark. The quaint, rusticpiece is displayed alongside a late 19th-century champagne pitcherfrom William West Durant’s yacht “Utowana.”

Even in the middle of the Adirondacks, some accountrements of highsociety were important.

While most of the exhibit focuses on history, a section of the shownods to the food culture of today – from Rachael Ray to areaeateries like the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery and the Log JamRestaurant.

“It’s interesting to see how the Adirondacks have changed. Now, alot of people come here to eat,” Rice said.

Packages of Sustain White Cheddar Potato Chips from Malone and aT-shirt from Oscar’s Smokehouse might be important historicalrelics in the future.

Everyday items often gain significance over time.

Something as simple as a vintage box of “Riteforks,” oncemanufactured by the Oval Wood Dish Company of Tupper Lake, may seemlike trash to some, but it’s an important part of localhistory.

The company produced disposable wooden serving pieces that were aprecursor to plastic and Styrofoam.

“They hired a lot of women, which was a little unusual at thetime,” Rice said.

Many of the items in the exhibition, like the products from theOval Wood Dish Company, were acquired through gifts from people wholive in the Adirondacks. Thousands of contributions have helped tobuild the museum’s collection through the years.

“It’s hard to compete with private collectors. We couldn’t do itwithout donations,” Rice said.

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