Sapping Ambler Farm of Syrup

As it turns out, the perfect topping for a snow day is maple syrup.

Wiltonians gathered outside Saturday afternoon to learn about tapping sugar maples and to eat bowls of vanilla ice cream with maple syrup on top.

"I think the best way to eat Ambler Farm maple syrup is on vanilla ice cream," said Program Coordinator and Property Manager at Ambler Farm Kevin Meehan.   

Meehan, a Wilton resident and school teacher, lead the interactive presentation at the farm's Maple Syrup Open House, which started tapping trees 3 years ago: the first year yielded 380 bottles of syrup, the second year the farm produced 515 bottles and this year the goal is one thousand bottles. 

"We do this by increasing the number of trees we tap," said Meehan. 

There are sugar maples tapped all over Wilton at the schools, town residences and throughout the rest of the community. There is even a Maple Syrup Club at Middlebrook School. 

Meehan, meanwhile, is quite fond of turning sap into syrup. 

"The process is absolutely fascinating and is uniquely North American." 

Properly tapping trees depends on the weather.  This time of year, when the nights are cold and the days are warmer, the sap starts flowing and that creates the perfect combination for extraction.  However, since sap is essentially trees' food, Ambler Farm makes sure to follow the Connecticut Maple Syrup Guidelines, keeping the arbors' best interest in mind.  Ambler will never tap a tree that is diseased or has broken limbs, either.

Sugar Maples have the highest sugar content and those are usually the trees you see with buckets.  The process begins the first week in February.

"Making maple syrup is winter farming," said Meehan, adding that it takes 40 buckets of sap to equal 1 bucket of syrup. 

After Meehan spoke to the crowd, visitors were invited to go to multiple syrup-related stations.  Kids drilled holes in and "tapped" tree stumps while others went to the ice cream table.  A taste-test area was set up and participants were asked which one was pure maple syrup, as opposed to the fake stuff in the grocery store, by tasting a popsicle stick dipped in each.    

At one point, Meehan headed over to a horizontal log with a dark liquid inside and a fire burning nearby.  Here he explained some folklore surrounding the Native American's discovery of the maple syrup process. 

One school of thought has it that when a chief took a tomahawk to a tree in frustration of a failed hunt, he left the tool in the tree with a bucket underneath.  The next day, the food had been cooked with the water in the bucket and the meal came out sweeter. 

"Native Americans were great about examining their environment and talking to each other."  So, they could easily figured out the sweet taste came from the sap dripping out of the tree. 

Another possibility is that a Native American took an icecicle off of a maple tree and when he ate it, he noticed the sweet flavor. 

Either way, Native Americans used to put the sap into a hollowed out log and put hot stones in it to turn the sap into sugar crystals, which they would trade to Native Americans in the Southern regions of the U.S. 

The final product, then and now, is sure popular.  Both adults and kids enjoyed the demonstrations, as well as the ice cream. 

"It's delicious!" said Wiltonian April Strazza.

Ambler Farm will be hosting a second Maple Syrup Open House on Saturday, March 6.