Maple syrup gathering   Save
Ohio Guide Photographs
Description: Caption reads: "21319 Timber Management, Forest Products, Ohio. Part of R. O. Hinsdale's sugar camp." Maple syrup season begin in January, ending around April in Ohio and while trees are tapped all over the state, Geauga County has some of the state's best, and hosts the state's Maple Syrup Festival every spring. There was a time in Geauga County's history when nearly 80% of the landowners had their own sugarbush. A sugar bush is a group of maples trees, together with a sugar house. Traditionally, maple syrup was harvested by tapping a maple tree through the bark and into the wood, then letting the sap run into a bucket, which required daily collecting; less labour-intensive methods such as the use of continuous plastic pipelines have since superseded this, in all but cottage-scale production. It takes approximately 10 gallons of sap to be boiled down to 1 quart of syrup. A mature sugar maple produces about 40 litres of sap during the 4 to 6 week sugaring season under gravity, but can produce 20 or more gallons under vacuum. Trees are not tapped until they have a diameter of 10 inches at chest-height and the tree is at least 40 years old. If the tree is more than 18 inches it can be tapped twice on opposite sides. Once the sap is collected, it is taken to the sugar house and put into an evaporator to boil the sap to syrup. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to get about 1 gallon of syrup. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1039AV_B08F03_030_001
Subjects: Maple syrup industry
Places: Ohio