How We Do It On the Bushee Family Maple Farm
How the Trees Do It:
During the summer, the sugar maple trees' green leaves use the sunlight, carbon dioide, water, and soil nutrients to produce the food energy needed for tree growth. During the season of brilliantly colored leaves some of the food energy is converted to starch. Throughout the winter months, the trees store the starch in root tissue waiting for the warmer sunlight of Spring to touch their branches. Through this warming period, the starch is converted into maple sugar which is an energy boost for young leaves.
How We Do It:
A tree is usually 40 years old and 12 inches in diameter at chest height before we can consider it for a tap. With Spring's warm days and below freezing nights, the sap begins rising from the roots and slowly drips from the tap into the bucket or sap lines. We gather over 40 gallons of sap for each gallon of maple syrup we make. A tap will yield about 1 quart of syrup during the season. Some of our maple trees have been tapped by the Bushee Family for nearly 100 years.
We gather the sap and take it to the sugarhouse where it is quickly boiled down in our large evaporator. The fresh maple syrup is checked for density, filtered, and packed into retail containers, or stainless steel barrels for storage.
As Spring's temperatures are warmer and leaf buds begin to appear, we pull our taps, clean our equipment and sell our pure Vermont maple products to you.