Sugar Season.

3-22-13 VERMONT: It gets warm in the afternoon now, and the sun is higher in the sky at midday. So, it’s spring here, it’s also mud season. The road has softened up again, and the ruts are back making the trip to town an adventure.

And it’s sugar season. Time to make the syrup. Our neighbors are tapping their trees and some of our trees to collect the sap to make the sugar.


Those silver buckets collect the sugar maple sap.

The sap is carried to the sugar shack where it is boiled on a wood fired stove until most of the water is removed, leaving a thick, sweet, brown syrup. That big cupola is opened up to let the steam out. The smoke goes up the chimney. When they're boilin', the shack is wreathed in a mist of smoke and steam. It takes 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup.