Photo from Lovenordic Design Blog.

Butternut Maple Loaf (from Barrington Middle School)

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 2 1/2 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp ginger
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup chopped butternuts

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and syrup, beat until very light. Combine dry ingredients and add alternately with water to the batter, beating well after each addition. Fold in nuts and pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake for 65 minutes. May or may not be frosted.

Maple Rice Pudding (from Morning Star Maple in Dublin)

• 2 1/2 cups cooked white rice
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup raisins

Combine all ingredients and blend thoroughly. Place in a buttered 2-quart baking dish and bake for about 35 minutes or until custard is firm.

Maple Spiced Milk

• 1 cup milk
• 3 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger

Heat all ingredients in a saucepan. Serve warm on hot or ready to eat cereal.

How to Tap a Maple Tree

You’ll need a:…

• Metal spout • Hand drill (with a 7/16 inch bit) • Hammer • Thermometer • Bucket • And… your parents’ permission!

Then…..

1. Find a sugar maple! Here’s what to look for:

Look for a big root on the sunny south side of the tree and then find a spot above the root about waist-high off the ground. Maple tapping time is early spring, when snow is on the ground and temps are below 32oF at night, but above freezing during the day. Any kind of maple tree can be tapped, but the best sap comes from sugar maples, tapped in spring.

Make sure the tree is on your property! 2. Drill a hole about 1.5 inches into the tree – slightly uphill – so the sap will run down. 3. Tap in the spout good and snug – but not too far – with the hook on the bottom.

After a few seconds, the sap should begin to run out of the spout.

4. Hang your bucket on the hook and slide the cover over it.

5. To make syrup from sap, you need to evaporate the water from the sap. After collecting the sap, bring it to boil it in a large pot. Be patient, this will take a while. You’ll know it’s ready when the syrup thickens and “aprons” (or sheets) off your kitchen spoon. Once it thickens, keep a close eye on it, and be careful not to overcook it. If you do, you’ll end up with thick taffy- like substance. Remember, it takes 40 oz of sap to get 1 oz of syrup. If your pot is not large enough to accommodate all your collected sap, simply add additional sap to your pot as you boil it down.

6. Place your syrup in a fresh, clean container and refrigerate overnight. Then… 7. Go and have some pancakes! And remember to appreciate the farmers who do this work day-in and day-out every spring.

Frequently Asked Questions:…

How do you know when its time to tap?

If the temperature rises to between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and sinks to below freezing at night, you can bet the sap is flowing! The combination of freezing temperatures at night and mild temperatures during the day helps to push the sap from the roots of the tree up into the trunk and branches, where it freezes. The next day, when the sun comes up and temperatures rise, the sap will start to flow — right out of your spout!

Why is the sap not running from the tree?

Check the outside temperature. If it’s below freezing the sap can’t flow – it’s frozen. Also, make sure the spout isn’t inserted at too upward an angle. You want to allow gravity to aid the sap in running into the bucket. Also, be aware that trees in the shade drip sap more slowly than trees that are warmed by direct sunlight.

Please visit the Coombs website for more tapping tips and information.

Photo courtesy Bascom Family.

New Hampshire Maple Weekend

During the third weekend every March (March 19, 2011 to March 20, 2011), over 50 sugar houses across New Hampshire open their doors to visitors. Take the opportunity to tour maple orchards and sugar houses and learn how maple syrup is made. Taste free samples of maple products and fill up on pancake breakfasts. You can also gather sap with horses or oxen, take a horse-drawn hay ride, watch a sap gathering contest or tour barnyards to see common and exotic animals. For locations, hours, and other information: 603-225-3757 or visit www.nhmapleproducers.com.

Vermont Maple Weekend

The Tenth Annual Vermont Maple Open House Weekend will be held at sugarhouses throughout Vermont, March 19 and 20, 2011. The Open House Weekend is the public celebration of the maple syrup season in Vermont and an opportunity for the public to visit one or more “sugarhouses” throughout the state to learn about Vermont’s first agricultural crop of the year. Activities during this free event will be different at each sugarhouse but will include the opportunity to watch maple syrup being made (weather permitting) and to often sample syrup and other maple products. For more information visit http://www.vermontmaple.org/open-house-weekend.php.

Traveling with children and want to make a weekend out of it?  What fun!  This site put together some useful information for trips to Connecticut, New York State, Vermont, and the rest of New England.  The Boston Globe also put together a maple shack map and profiled a few sugar houses.

We hope to see you March 19-20 at Bascom Family Farms in Alstead, New Hampshire!!

Photo Boston.com.

An old wooden spout and bucket.

An archival photograph of sugaring.

1. Collect snow from winter storm.

2. Heat maple syrup until bubbly and pour over fresh snow.

3. Enjoy.

Snow photo from Grace Lin Pinterest via Tumblr.

The Maple Syrup Book by Janet Eagleson & Rosemary Hasner

Backyard Sugarin’: A Complete How-To Guide by Rink Mann

Making Maple Syrup The Old-Fashioned Way by Noel Perrin (a Storey Country publication)

Maple Syrup Cookbook: Over 100 Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner by Ken Haedrich

Maple Syrup Season by Ann Purmell

Sugaring Time by Kathryn Lasky

Remember the last time you sat down to a plate of pancakes.  Maybe it was in the morning with a steaming cup of hot tea or at night with an icy glass of milk for dinner.  The ultimate comfort food, you turned the cap of your maple syrup container and let the sweet drizzle of childhood memories create a pool on your plate. Delicious mouthfuls of warm pancake dripping with maple syrup. Is there anything as satisfying?

The makers of Log Cabin Syrup and other breakfast syrups hope not. They are looking for something edible to sell and they don’t want you to differentiate between little words like “maple” and “breakfast” or “table”  when it comes to your syrup. In fact they want you to grow accustomed to their “authentic syrup, known for its unique maple taste” and appear to be fashioning the marketing campaigns of their “fake” maple syrup after the real maple syrup.

Authentic vs. Imitation

Companies, like the ones who make Log Cabin All Natural Syrup, who attempt to capture that authentic experience you’ve created in your head by taking your real maple syrup and imitating it with their “all natural” syrup seem to be… well to be candid…cheating (Funny all you have to do to change “eating” to “cheating” is add a couple letters sort of how Pinnacle Foods adds a couple ingredients such as caramel color and xanthan gum.)

You may have even read about maple syrup makers in New Hampshire and Vermont who petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in early September to investigate whether Log Cabin Syrup, a division of Pinnacle Foods LLC, is violating federal labeling laws and potentially misleading consumers with the word “natural” on the packaging of their (new) “All Natural Syrup.” As a result of the inquiry,  Pinnacle Foods announced in late September it would remove the caramel color of its Log Cabin “All Natural” Syrup to comply with FDA guidelines.

Maple syrup makers are still concerned Pinnacle Foods Log Cabin “All Natural” Syrup, which is packaged in plastic jugs similar to those used to bottle real maple syrup and placed near their real maple syrup on the shelf, but marked at half the price of real maple syrup will confuse consumers.

Hurting Small Farmers

It’s a sad sign of the times when a multi-billion dollar company misleads shoppers and takes market share away from farmers. That is what’s happening in the maple category. A big concern of Arnold Coombs is how this will effect the family farmer who produces syrup as a second income. As the fake syrup misleads shoppers away from pure, their hard work has less value.

Why don’t the producers of the table (fake maple) breakfast syrup just tell you consumers their story straight?  Why model it after the real stuff?  Is the real story of the (fake) breakfast syrup so scary or unappetizing? Is it because there is a factory and not a farm in the background?

Buying good food on a budget is difficult. No one is denying that or that real maple syrup can be twice what the (fake) table stuff is.  That said, what kind of an example are companies producing the (fake) table syrup setting trying to sell it as the real maple syrup at half the price?  Do consumers really need to be tricked?  Why complicate the shopping experience. On a budget and cannot afford the real stuff, completely understandable. Maybe a consumer can afford it half the time, maybe not at all. Just let the consumer have an honest experience and leave the tricking to friendly neighbors with bags of candy on Halloween.

Top image courtesy Flickr user Glass_House.

Coombs Family Farms is committed not just to the future of small family farms, but also to the future and health of our forests and environment.  We tap conservatively, and do not use pesticides. My grandfather, Robert Sr., always said, “There are no shortcuts to creating pure maple syrup – we do right by the forest and it’ll do right by you.”

To this day, Coombs Family Farms still works with many of the same maple trees my great, great-grandparents once tapped. Some of the trees are now more than 300 years old, one nearly 20 feet  in circumference.

Photo Bascom Family Archives.