Maple Sugaring

[Rhonda Veros]

The campus at CSHL has a beautiful combination of landscaped gardens and natural woodlands and shoreline. Several years ago Idee Malardi began making arrangements for a wonderful naturalist from Caumsett State Park, Virginia Dankel, to come to the Lab to lead us on seasonal nature walks. It's been fun to learn about Long Island natural history particularly as it relates to our campus. On one of our walks during the late winter of 2003 we "tapped" a maple tree, collecting the sap in a gallon sized plastic water bottle. We were all surprised to see that the sap looked like water and had only the faintest taste of sweetness. As the sap continued to run and overflow the container Idee and I were concerned that it would go to waste. So we came back to the Lab the next day with many more bottles and took the sap home to make our own maple syrup. I eventually ended up with a tasty vanilla-like syrup unlike the maple flavor we're accustomed to. Unfortunately, the ratio of sap to syrup is about 40 to 1. After cooking a couple of gallons of sap for hours and hours I produced barely an ounce of syrup!!