One of the things Ed really likes about the Driftless Area is the abundance of Sugar Maple trees. He wants to tap sugar maples and make maple syrup.
Up until this point, I hadn’t quite realized the distinction between all the different maple trees. We have learned that Sugar Maple leaves are darker green on top with a lighter green on the underside. They generally have five main lobes (which have sharp teeth connected by smooth, U-shaped margins between points; the leaves are more rounded at the base.
Our home in Milwaukee has a big and messy Norway maple tree; our new property has some Box Elder maples, a number of Silver Maples, Red Maples, and some very large Sugar Maples (although not as many as Ed had first hoped).
As it turns out, you can tap any or all of these maple varieties to make syrup; it’s just that the non-Sugar Maple varieties have lower sugar contents and therefore need to be boiled longer. From online research, the flavor of the syrup from these other maples is apparently “the same” or very similar to maple syrup made from pure Sugar Maple sap.
According to “the internet”, you can also tap and make syrup from Birch, Alder, Black Walnut, and Hickory (some of which are on our property); but again, the sugar content is less => the boiling time is longer. Apparently, people even make a different kind of syrup (called Shagbark Hickory syrup) from the bark of the Hickory tree by boiling the bark for flavor and then adding sugar for sweetness.
When our house is finally and fully refurbished, we will look forward to tapping some trees and making some syrup! We have a lot to figure out in the meantime about how to efficiently boil the sap down and how to transport the volume of sap needed. I guess that’s all part of the journey… Pancakes anyone?
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