KENOSHA, Wis. — It’s one the sweetest times of the year, sugaring season. Tree sap is flowing through maple trees across Wisconsin, and it’s just begging to be harvested into buckets and turned into delicious maple syrup.
The sap harvesting season runs from February to April with March being the peak. It's the best time to get sap because temperatures need to be below freezing at night and above freezing during the day.
"That causes the sap to go up and down the tree. That’s why we do our maple sugaring at this time of year," Kailyn Palomares, a naturalist and education manager at Hawthorn Hollow Nature Center and Arboretum in Kenosha, said.
After a few small steps, it turns into the golden brown topping we love putting on our favorite treats. Students from Praire Lane Elementary from Pleasant Prairie who were on a field trip at Hawthorn Hollow were eager to share the treats they love putting syrup on. That list included: bacon, waffles, pancakes, sausage, ice cream, oatmeal, and french toast. That's a pretty comprehensive list.
Harvesting and turning sap into syrup is a relatively easy process. All one needs to do is find a maple tree more than 10 inches wide, hammer a spigot into it, put a bucket over the spigot, once the bucket is full, empty it, and finally boil the sap into syrup. That's it. However, there is one catch. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make just 1 gallon of syrup.
“People do it at home. It’s just, you know, they get a little frustrated at the end of the season when they’ve gotten one bottle out of their one maple tree," Palomares said.
It’s easier when you have 100-tappable trees like Hawthorn Hollow has.
You can also try the sap straight from the tree. However, it doesn't have much of a taste.
"It tastes watery," one elementary student said.
Vermont is widely known as the supreme syrup leader. However, Wisconsin is actually the fourth largest producer in the country making 440,000 gallons in 2022, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
In 2022, sugar season got off to a late and slow start. This year, sap harvesting is back on track which is good news for us syrup lovers.
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