By
Christina Bellas, Farmpark Interpretation & Education Manager
What
is a harbinger of spring that comes from a maple tree? What special edible
liquid is boiled to more than 200 degrees and comes from a maple tree? What has
the same calcium content as whole milk and comes from a maple tree? Maple
syrup! In our program Discover Maple Syrup, offered mid-February to
mid-March, children in kindergarten through fifth grade discover the science
behind the maple tree and how we use its sap to produce maple syrup.
Did
you know that a maple tree can’t lie about its age, its tree rings or growth
rings give its age away? Children are able to investigate a tree cookie (a
slice of the tree trunk) where they can count the rings and discover other
interesting features of the tree’s life. Tree cookies can show harm done by
weather or bugs many years after the damage occurred. By looking deeply into
the tree itself and studying a tree trunk diagram, the children find that maple
trees produce sap as food for themselves. How we gather and process that sap is
where a visit to the Woodland Center sugar house comes in. There they see how
technology plays a big part in the production of maple syrup, from the spile in
the tree where the sap comes out, to the tank that holds the sap, to the
equipment that boils it into the sweet golden syrup we all love.
While
touring the Woodland Center students learn sugar making terms. We “tap” a tree
to gather the “sap;” we hope for just the right weather forecast, cool nights
and sunny days, so the sap will ”run;” and the “sugar house” is where all the
“boiling” takes place. A “reverse osmosis” machine removes water from the sap
and our wood fired “evaporator” holds the sap while it’s boiling into syrup. A
computer monitors the evaporator and draws off the sap when it becomes the
right syrup consistency.
The
students learn that it’s all about the trees when making syrup. Farmpark is
located in an exclusive section of the world where maple trees grow and thrive.
The land of maple sugaring is limited to the northeastern section of North
America, occurring only in the late winter/early spring of the year and
production depends greatly on just the right weather conditions. In a
classroom, it’s sometimes hard to describe to the students about the flowers,
leaves and seeds of the beautiful sugar maple tree, but at Farmpark they can
see the maple tree in action. Though we might not have the goose that lays the
golden egg, we do have the trees that provide the golden syrup.
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