On March 15, 2009, we took our family out to Malabar Farm, a local attraction that was once the home of Louis Bromfield. Every year they host a Maple Sugar Festival where they explain the rich heritage of Maple Syrup and Maple Sugar. Hannah and Luke really enjoyed the opportunity to get out for a day after being cooped up most of the winter.
We saw many trees with buckets and some with special tubing to collect the liquid nectar from the trees. Hannah was pretty fascinated with these trees, but then we got to learn how the Native Americans use to collect the syrup prior to the White Settlers who came into the area. We learned some interesting facts about it including that the average life expectancy of Indians was only 35 years of age.
It seems that they used a hollowed out log to put all the tree sap into and then used heated rocks to bring the sap to a boil. It was pretty neat to see how it all worked, but then he explained that this process helped to shorten the life of the Native Americans. The rock particles and ash would get into the syrup and sugar and grind the teeth down.
Once their teeth were ground down to nibs, it would allow germs and other bacteria to cause tooth decay and gum diseases. This in turn led to some pretty sick people with the leading cause of death, infected gums and teeth.
Here we saw several re-enactors portraying several types of sugar camps that they used. Once the white men came, they brought metal pans to boil the sap into syrup. What a huge difference this made and Hannah even got to go into a live operating modern sugar shack. The kids really enjoyed the free samples as well.
Did I mention that we also got some maple fudge and maple sugar? Yum! Unfortunately those did not last very long. The good news is that we did buy some fresh syrup. It has been a real treat on our pancakes since then.
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