Indiana Campus Picture Blog -- maple sugaring

[Dan Haas]

Rachel, Lauren, and Sarah HaasMy kids wait in Adam's Alley for their maple sugaring lesson.

Tony Kliewer has the tractor loaded up and ready to go. Just pull on the much-needed boots and head out.

Sugaring is done at the spring thaw when the sap starts running, and you can count on the ground being mushy (note the tire tracks, and later, the muddy boots.)

There's those muddy boots

The sap tastes like water – hardly sweet at all, and is very thin. If I recall, it takes 20 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Maybe forty gallons. I think twenty. You just boil it down. As you can imagine, you need a lot of ventilation to remove the steam from the cookhouse. Notice the fans. The cooking vessels are heated with steam from the Powerhouse across the street.

[Dan Haas]

Are you kidding? And we got to taste the final product! Sweet!