Vermont Maple syrup

[Richard Flanders]

Folks up here tap birch trees to make syrup. It takes something like 100gal of sap to make a gallon of syrup. It's darker, thinner and not as sugary, I think. Some operations here in Fairbanks do the tube thing and the moose play hell with those setups when they wander through them. The syrup is good but not as good as maple and too expensive for my budget.

My only personal syrup story goes back to the early 70's in Michigan. We tapped a bunch of trees and collected the sap and carried it back to the cooker in a 30gal trash can in the back of a Suburban. Maynard put on the brakes too hard at one traffic light and it tipped over and filled the the whole thing with sap. We sat there at the light with the doors open and sap pouring out all the doors.... and laughing like loons. We cooked all our sap down on large flat pans of some sort on an outdoor brick BBQ. I have a picture somewhere of me collecting sap with a pack basket on my back to put it in.