Sugar Trees

When I was growing up my aunt and parents would tap the sugar maple trees on my aunt's property in rural Wisconsin and boil down the sap over a wood fire right out in the woods.  Lunch would be a hot dog roasted over the coals.  I often heard them refer to the trees they tapped as "hard maples".  So I assumed this was the only kind of tree that you could use for making maple syrup.  I was wrong.

Our maple tree showing off its fall color.

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The trees in our yard are not sugar maple trees and yet the sugar content is high.  You can detect the sweetness even when drinking the sap.  Last year I made an herbal tea by heating up the sap and adding it to a jar with licorice root and lemon balm and letting it steep overnight.  I was delicious and even my friends at work enjoyed it.

Lemon Balm can be grown in your zone 4 garden.

I read that back when people lived off the land exclusively, it was common to drink sap from trees each spring as a tonic.  The sap contains nutrients and was the first fresh food (beverage) that was available after the long winter.

I learned from Grit magazine that many trees besides sugar maples can be used to make very good syrup.  And you don't need a forest!  Lawn trees have larger crowns than forest-grown trees and thus have a higher sugar content. Typically a person must cook down 30 to 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  Now those high prices for real maple syrup make more sense!  Last year we calculated that it took 22 gallons of our lawn tree sap to make one gallon of syrup.  It was thinner than the syrup you find in the store, but it was so sweet we knew it was cooked down enough for our taste.

Birch trees between piles of fire wood.

Box elder, walnut and sweet birch (black and yellow) are other trees that can be used for making syrup.  This year we want to try some of these other trees to see first hand the flavor of syrup made from these "non-maple" trees.  The sugar content in the sweet birch trees is about half that of a maple tree but apparently they produce copious amounts of sap.

Box elder tree on right.

We found it interesting how the taste of the syrup changed as the season progressed.  Last year, here in Minnesota, we had what I refer to as "the winter that would not end".  We had one of the longest springs I can remember with the freeze thaw cycle continuing for several months.  Our first batch of syrup had a distinctly maple flavor.  As the season continued each batch became less maple tasting until the final batch which was just sweet. In mid April, we threw in the towel, removed the spiles, sealed the holes and called it quits - all during a late season snow storm!  We had produced 10 gallons of syrup and felt this was a good outcome for our first try.

Note the change in color as the season progressed.

We have been using the maple syrup all year as our "go to" sweetener.  We have used it in our homemade yogurt, in baked goods, and to sweeten coffee and tea.  And every once in a while on pancakes or french toast.  I love recipes that have ingredients that I can find in my back yard.