Maple Syrup the Old-fashioned Way

After a long snowy winter, the temperature has been fluctuating enough for the sap in the maple trees to start to run and it is time to make maple syrup.  

This weekend is Maple Weekend for the NYS growers.  Here's a link to their map if you want to visit a sugar shack:  http://nysmaple.com/

One of my most popular blog posts has been: Why is Real Maple Syrup so Expensive?  

The answer is due to the cost of collecting and boiling down the sap into syrup.  

It takes about 60 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup!

I have a very old New York State teachers guide --- that's where I found this photo --  it was published in 1904  --- and it talks about the "old days"  --- before they had modern buckets.  They used to use wooden buckets. 

Galvanized metal buckets were new technology in 1904!

Maple Syrup Pipeline

I wonder what they would think 110 years later about the plastic tubing that runs from the trees directly to the maple house.  

B