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New Hampshire: How Sweet It Is!

© Christina Coruth

Maple trees are decked out with buckets and tubing. Nights are cold, but the promise of Spring warms the days. The sap is running, collected, and processed into pure maple syrup. It's that sweetest of times in New Hampshire -- maple sugaring time.

Maple syrup production is unique to North America, more specifically southeastern Canada and northeastern United States. Sugar Maples and the right climate only exist within a 700 mile radius of the Great Lakes.

Native Americans taught the colonial settlers about the sweet secret of the maple trees and how to get it. Written references to maple syrup made by colonists date back to 1609. One legend attributes its accidental discovery to Iroquois Chief Woksis. On a cold March evening he threw his tomahawk into a maple tree. The following morning, he removed it and went about his business. As the sun warmed the wound in the tree, a clear liquid flowed from it into a wooden bowl at the base of the tree. Chief Woksis' daughter, thinking it was water, used it to cook supper. As it boiled down, it imparted a sweet taste to the meat.

Although it's not certain how much truth there is to this legend, it is certain that Native Americans discovered the sweet treat and relied on it for flavoring their food. Maple sap is 98% percent water. Reducing it to a sugary sweet level requires boiling, which requires a lot of heat. Native Americans placed heated stones into the sap containers to speed the heating process and reduce the amount of wood needed. It takes 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup.

Vermont is the top producer of maple syrup in New England and is most often the first state that comes to mind at the mention of maple syrup. However, New Hampshire is the third largest producer of maple syrup in New England and can hold her own in the quality of the syrup produced and the dedication of the producers.

Tapping using tubing and a container to catch the sap in this home sugaring.

Private individuals tap maple trees in their yards to produce syrup for their own needs. Many maple syrup businesses sprang from the desire of one family member to make syrup for the family. At age 16, Bob Lovely decided to put the maples surrounding the family home to good use by making his own syrup. Hours of boiling down the syrup in his mother's kitchen left its mark as the wallpaper began to peel! Today Bob and his wife Mary operate Lovely Acres in New London, NH where they produce and sell maple syrup, as well as other maple products.

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