One of the best spring tonics we know is to take in the rising steam of the boiling sap from the evaporator at the sugar house at the Kinter Farm. Each year we eagerly await the harvesting of the sap and the chance to take in the sweet smell of the boiling sap. This evaporator is gas fired; an older evaporator used at the sugar house for many years was wood fired. The sap is heated to just the right temperature and begins to flow through several chambers in the evaporator before boiling down to finished syrup that is bottled into maple syrup.
Cold nights and warm sunny days allow the sap in the sugar maples to rise. It takes anywhere from 40 to 60 gallons of sap to boil down into one gallon of maple syrup.
The annual maple sugaring program at the Kinter Farm is one of the most popular programs in the Friends of the Parks series. Here Andy Kinter leads the group in a tour of the sugar bush. Andy's dad, Alan, has tapped sugar maple trees here since 1962, a family tradition that the Kinters generously share with us each spring.
