Some foods give you gas, but March is the time of year when gas gives you a delicious food. Maple syrup, which is nutritious enough to be listed by the US Department of Agriculture as a food, is carbon dioxide-powered. If it wasn’t for a bunch of little gas bubbles in the wood or xylem tissue, maple sap would not flow. Who knew that trees were carbonated?
A mere two decades ago, biologists and arborists were at a loss to explain what causes maple sap to run. They’d typically mumble something about vacuum and straws before changing the subject. Everyone was aware that below-freezing nights followed by warm days led to sap flow. But it wasn’t until recent years that the mechanism behind sap flow was better – although still not perfectly – understood.
Sweet News – Maple Weekend is Back
It’s a great opportunity for your family to visit one or more of the region’s family-run maple sugaring operations to see first-hand, from tree to table, how delicious, local maple syrup and other maple confections are made and to sample and take home some of the best tasting, pure, natural maple products in the world. Weather permitting, you’ll be able to watch the sap to syrup process unfold right before your eyes.
Maple Weekend is agri-tourism at its finest; an annual event organized by NYSMPA, funded by both NYSMPA members and the NY State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and supported and championed by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cornell Maple Program. The Maple Weekend initiative began in the mid-1990s, when NYSMPA producer-members across the state, in the first coordinated effort of this type, opened their doors for an event they called Maple Sunday. The objective for this year’s Maple Weekend event is the same as it was then; to provide an opportunity for interested persons to see for themselves, personally, how maple trees are tapped and how sap is collected and boiled into pure, delicious maple syrup.
» Continue Reading.