Maple Syrup Coloring Pages
Sap from a maple tree looks like plain water and tastes only a little bit sweet. Boil most of the water away and what's left is maple syrup, which means every pancake topping starts with a hole in a tree and a bucket.
Jump to: First Makers | Planting | Tap Hole | Buckets | Collecting Sap | Sugar Shack | Boiling | Bottling | Pancakes | Syrup on Snow
The First Syrup Makers
Indigenous peoples in the northeast of North America were tapping maple trees long before the first settlers arrived. They boiled the sap down into sugar that could be stored all year, and settlers learned the craft from them. Maple is only one of the gifts the world got from Native peoples.
Native American Heritage Month coloring pages
Planting a Maple Tree
A maple has to grow for a few decades before it's big enough to tap. So whoever plants one is really planting syrup for somebody else's pancakes!
Drilling the Tap Hole
Sap runs best in late winter and early spring when the nights still freeze but the days start to warm up. That's when a small hole goes into the trunk and a little tap called a spile fits inside it.
Hanging the Bucket
Drip, drip, drip! Sap runs out of the spile and into a bucket with a lid to keep the rain and leaves out. Big sugar farms now use plastic tubing that carries the sap straight to a tank, but plenty of people still hang buckets the old-fashioned way.
Collecting the Sap
Full buckets get emptied into a big barrel or can and hauled off to the sugar shack. Sap is mostly water so it's heavy, which is why a sled comes in handy on snowy ground.
The Sugar Shack
A sugar shack is where sap turns into syrup. The roof has a vent to let out all the steam, so a fluffy cloud over the chimney means somebody is boiling. In Quebec it's called a cabane à sucre, and families go there every spring for a big syrupy meal.
Boiling Down the Sap
The sap boils in a wide shallow pan so the water can escape as steam as fast as possible. It takes about 40 litres of sap to make just one litre of syrup, so the boiling goes on for hours.
Filtering and Bottling
Hot syrup gets poured through a cloth filter to catch any tiny gritty bits. Then it goes into jars and bottles while it's still hot so it keeps.
Syrup on Pancakes
Real maple syrup has just one ingredient: maple sap. Nothing gets added, so every sticky drop on the plate came straight from a tree.
Syrup on Snow
Pour hot maple syrup onto clean snow and it turns into chewy taffy in seconds. Roll it up on a stick and you've got a candy that takes nothing but snow and syrup.
