Sherry Johnson, age 10, of Smithers, British Columbia, Canada, for her question:
HOW DO THEY MAKE MAPLE SYRUP?
More than 100 species of the maple family are found among the world's trees. Thirteen are native to North America. The handsome tree provides shade along many of the streets in the northeastern part of the United States and in eastern Canada, and the wood is a favorite with people in the furniture making industry. Maple is also used to make floors and musical instruments.
Most important of all maple tree varieties is the sugar maple, which is also called the hard or rock maple. It grows from Newfoundland to the Great Lakes, south to Georgia and west to Manitoba and Texas. It can reach a height of 135 feet and its trunk may be five feet across.
In autumn the maple's dark green leaves turn to beautiful yellow, orange and red. The maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada and also appears on the Canadian flag.
Delicious maple syrup comes from the sugary sap of the hard maple. Its production is a major business in New York, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Quebec and Vermont. The Canadian province of Quebec produces more maple syrup than all of the other provinces and states together.
Maple sap is a colorless, watery material that comes out of the sugar maple. The sap is collected in late winter or early spring. The nights are cold during the sapping season, which lasts only a few weeks, but the days are warmer. The daily rise and fall in temperatures starts the sap flowing.
In an older method of collecting sap, a producer drills one or more holes into a tree and drives a metal spout into each hole. The sap runs through the spout into a bucket that hangs from the spout. After the buckets are filled, the producer empties their contents into a large bucket, which is taken by sled or wagon to a building called a sugarhouse.
A more modern method sees the producer inserting plastic spouts into the holes he has drilled. The sap then runs through a series of plastic tubes which connect to the spouts and lead to a pipeline system which goes to the sugarhouse.
In the sugarhouse, the sap it boiled in a long, shallow pan called an evaporator. The color and flavor develop during this process and most of the water in the sap evaporates. Pure maple syrup remains. When the sap is boiled beyond the syrup stage, it becomes maple sugar.
You can buy pure maple syrup and use it on your pancakes or waffles. But most of the so called maple syrups that you find on your market shelf contain only a small amount of actual maple syrup or sugar. Most of the products are a combination of maple syrup, cane sugar syrup and corn syrup.
Much maple syrup is used to make maple sugar, maple butter and cream, and also maple candy.