Lisa Gauker held up a bottle of store-bought pancake syrup.
“Is this really maple syrup?” the recreation and special events supervisor for the Berks County Department of Parks and Recreation asked.
Turning it over, she read aloud the list of ingredients beginning with corn syrup and water.
“This is in my house, and I eat this,” she told the crowd attending the department’s annual maple sugaring event, “but it is very different from maple syrup that you produce yourself.”
About 50 people, half of them children, came out for the program Saturday at Gring’s Mill Recreation Area in Spring Township.
Among them were Desiree Ebert of Sinking Spring and her daughter, Emma, 3.
The mother and daughter came to the program with other members of an area mom and kids club.
They and other attendees learned about the syrup making process from identifying sugar maple trees, seeing a tree tapped on site and watching sap being boiled down to tasting real maple syrup on miniature pancakes.
Sugar maples work best for syrup, Gauker said, since their sap contains two percent sugar and 98 percent water, while silver, red and Norway maple sap has only one percent sugar.
Other trees with lower sap sugar content, such as hickory, can also be tapped, but as with other maples, about twice the amount of sap is needed compared to sugar maples.
Maple trees can be identified by their branches and bark, Gauker said, asking the children to stand and pretend to be trees.
Maple branches come in pairs; each has a partner on the opposite side of the trunk, Gauker explained as the children stretched out their arms evenly.
As trees grow, they expand outward and upward, she said, watching the children stretch.
The sap flows through the sapwood, or younger outer wood of a tree, Gauker said, and carries water and nutrients from the tree’s roots to its branches and leaves.
Sap collection typically begins in February as the days warm and the sap begins to flow, she said.
Syrup sap is best to tap when the nighttime temperatures are below freezing, and the daytime highs are between the upper 30s and lower 40s. But the process is late this year, due to the recent cold weather, she noted.
Outside, the children and adults helped the park staff identify several sugar maples.
Ezekiel Chibwe, 10, was the first to point one out.
He is a budding naturalist, his mother, Emma Chibwe, said.
The Shillington family, Emma, her husband, Luyando; Exekiel and younger children, Kembia, 7; Mutinta, 5; and Moses, 2; like to hike on local nature trails, she said, and enjoy the family-friendly programs offered by the county parks department.
Ezekiel frequently raised his hand to answer and ask questions through the program.
When the park staff selected one of the larger maples, Ezekiel wanted to know why one of the smaller trees wasn’t chosen.
To help protect the health of younger trees, Gauker answered, only those that are at least a few feet in circumference should be tapped.
The group watched Chief Ranger Doug Grove drill a small hole through the bark into the sap wood.
Next, Kathy Grim, a recreation program assistant, inserted a small tap, called a spile, and attached it to the plastic hose used drain the sap into a covered bucket.
Park staff will check on it over the next few days, Gauker said.
The sap is sweet but isn’t syrup yet, she said. It has to be boiled until most of the water has evaporated.
Collected sap is typically boiled for six hours to a temperature of 219 degrees when it is just right.
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.
“That’s why real maple syrup isn’t cheap,” Gauker said.
For Emma, sampling locally produced maple syrup on pancakes at the end of the program was the best part, her mother said.
Ezekiel disagreed. He liked learning about maple trees, he said.
As for the syrup, he liked it but found it a bit too sweet for his taste.
“It tastes very sugary,” he said.
Source: Berkshire mont
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