Photo By Michael Strasser | Hundreds of Fort Drum community members visited the Sugar Shack outside LeRay Mansion,...... read more read more
FORT DRUM, N.Y. (March 25, 2024) -- It seems spring is battling winter for control of North Country weather, lately. But despite the snow and cold temperatures, Fort Drum community members got a taste of a popular regional tradition called Maple Days, March 18-23.
Hosted by the Fort Drum Natural Resources Branch, the event attracted hundreds to the Sugar Shack near LeRay Mansion, where metal pails collected sap from nearly 200 sugar maple trees for a demonstration of syrup production.
“We call this a sugar bush because it is a forest of sugar maple trees that we use for making maple syrup,” said Travis Ganter, Fort Drum forester. “You can actually tap any kind of maple trees – red maples, silver maples, box elders – but they don’t have as high a sugar content as the sugar maple.”
New York is second only to Vermont in maple syrup production. Ganter said the industry is primarily in the northeast U.S. and Canada for its suitable woodlands and weather conditions.
The sugaring season begins with the arrival of spring weather, where warm sunny days and cold nights trigger the flow of sap.
“There’s a pressure gradient in the tree,” said Mike Stiefel, Fort Drum forester. “When it drops below freezing at night, the cells inside the tree are filled with gas and they contract. It creates negative pressure and sucks the sap out of the roots and moves upward where it freezes during the night. When it warms up in the daytime, the gas expands and pushes the sap out.”
Stiefel said roughly 40 gallons of sap is needed to produce one gallon of maple syrup.
Attendees observed the clear sap dripping into a pail as the foresters explained the laborious process of making maple syrup.
“When it comes out of the tap, it’s 98 percent water and 2 percent sugar,” Ganter said. “Making maple syrup is basically boiling the water off to make it denser. When it gets to about 67 percent, then you can call it syrup.”
Inside the steam-filled Sugar Shack, Stiefel explained how the wood-fired evaporator accomplishes that sweet percentage. As the sap boils and becomes more concentrated, it moves through the evaporator via chambers until it can be drawn out and filtered.
“I can tell when it gets to 67 percent sugar with the hydrometer, which is kind of a fancy thermometer with a weight on the bottom,” Stiefel said.
Afterward, attendees could sample the pure maple syrup and take home a bag of maple cotton candy.
“Rich,” “super sweet,” and a smell like “burnt s’mores” were some of the responses after the taste test.
On March 23, Stiefel demonstrated the “old-school” method of making syrup using a 50-gallon cast-iron kettle over an open fire.
“The taste is a little different,” he said. “It has a smokier flavor, but it’s great in sauces and marinades.”
Attendees also visited LeRay Mansion to learn more about the history of syrup production in the North Country. Heather Wagner, Fort Drum Cultural Resources Program education and outreach coordinator, showed visitors how to make maple candy through a simple process of heating and cooling syrup into hard crystalized sugar.
“This is probably what you would have seen most maple products being made into 200 years ago,” Wagner said. “Maple sugar was easy to store in cake form, like these candies, and then sold as you would a bag of white sugar. And it had a political meaning for colonialists who saw this as an anti-British sugar. It was an alternative to buying white cane sugar from the British.”
Susan Harrison, who attended the event with her husband and five daughters, just arrived at Fort Drum two weeks ago. She said it didn’t take long to hear the buzz about Maple Days.
“We go to church with the people we were with here, and they told us this was happening,” she said. “But it was also splashed everywhere, so we had seen the flyer at several locations.”
Harrison is from Tennessee and her husband is from Colorado, but their duty stations have been in Texas and Georgia until now.
“So, our kids have never been in this part of the country,” she said. “And we love it. It’s snowing, and it’s great.”
Until the Maple Days visit, Harrison said all they knew about maple syrup production was from a “Curious George” cartoon.
“They watched that episode a million times, but we have never experienced anything like this,” she said. “It was so nice. I love these opportunities in the community to educate children.”
| Date Taken: | 03.25.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 03.25.2024 08:55 |
| Story ID: | 466943 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 68 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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