Nature has much to share with us on the first day of spring, like the clean sweet caramel taste of pure maple syrup.
At River Trail Nature Center in Northbrook on Sunday, families were introduced to the sweet taste of the forest, during the 50th annual Maple Syrup Festival.
“Here happens to be a site the of an ancient sugar maple forest that’s been growing here for 6,000 years, it’s a relic left over from an earlier time, situated right along the Des Plaines River,” Brian Winters, assistant director of River Trail Nature Center said.
This event, according to Winters, is primarily a community celebration of spring, with educational and fun activities offering families a journey back in time to learn about maple syrup history.
Demonstrations on tree tapping were offered on the hour, along with naturalist guided walks into the forest, presentations on old-fashioned sap cooking methods and continuous viewing of sugar shack cooking operations, all illustrating how maple sap from the tree is cooked into a syrup.
Pure maple syrup samples were made available for tasting, crafts and entertainment for the kids, along with educational partner booths, like the University of Illinois Extension’s master gardener program, offering complementary seedling samples for planting.
Winters says spring is the best time for tapping the tree.
“An elegant process takes place inside the tree, there is a buildup of pressure when air temperatures fall below freezing, this makes the tree soak up more water,” Winters said.
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“In spring, the combination of freezing and warmer days together, allow the sap to come out more quickly,” Winters said.
According to River Trail Center naturalist Ryan DePauw, when a hole is drilled into the trunk to tap a maple tree, each tree can yield about 10 gallons of sap, collected in a bucket during a season lasting about 4 to 5 weeks.
“We need 40 gallons of sap in order to make just one gallon of syrup, when sap is heated to boiling we bring out the sugar in the sap which turns it into syrup,” DePauw said.
Lisa Schindler of Hoffman Estates attended the festival with her kids.
“We all love eating maple syrup and we are here on this beautiful day to learn about where this sweet treat actually comes from,” Schindler said.
River Trail Nature Center hosts a number of different maple syrup related programs during late winter, early spring.
In addition to their Maple Syrup Festival, the center also offers, Sap’s Rising, a weekend program that extends from February through the end of March.
Samir Pelinkovic of Evanston attended Sunday with family.
“Out here in nature, the kids can experience their own imagination — my son playing on those logs said he was sailing a pirate ship and another child said he was stirring his own batch of maple syrup, there just aren’t any limits,” Pelinkovic said.
Gina Grillo is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.