#Sugar maple leaf new hampshire how to

The process was time consuming but the results worth the effort and long boiling time. They filled the log containers with the sap and boiled it over the fire. During the time of Native Americans, hot stones were placed into logs they had hollowed out. Once at the sugarhouse, the next step in the long process began. Over time, harvesters began to use oxen or horses to transport the sap to the sugarhouses. The process took time, because the clear sap in liquid form dripped slowly from the taps into buckets placed on the trees.īringing the buckets from the woods to a camp or farm was also labor intensive.

At that time, they drilled tiny holes into the trees. The process starts usually in late February when harvesters went into the woods where they had sugar maple trees. (A successful maple year depends greatly on the weather and temperatures.) They knew this was when they could harvest sap for sugar, and they watched the weather with anticipation. The early colonists endured the harsh New Hampshire winters and once they knew the process of maple sugaring, they were eager for late winter and early spring. By the late 1880s, around 300,000 gallons was produced for sale on a yearly basis. It was just about the only sweetener in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s. In New England, if you could make and store maple products, you had a valuable currency to eat and trade with others. But they soon learned it was a time-consuming, difficult process to make maple sugar and syrup. In the early days of the country, sugar was not easy to obtain thus discovering there was a natural way to get sugar from trees must have seemed like manna from heaven to settlers.

#Sugar maple leaf new hampshire how to

The early settlers in the state likely learned from Native Americans how to collect sap and boil it to make the sweet syrup from the sugar maple trees around them. Certainly, the Granite State was not the first area maple sugar was made, because many other places also practiced sugaring in the late winter and early spring. New Hampshire has a long history with making maple syrup, which was originally produced by Native Americans. It seems Governor Wentworth had the right idea when he predicted the sweet maple product would become highly desirable to many. What was the business? Turns out it was a tiny box of maple sugar Wentworth sent to a British nobleman.