The Magic of Maple Sugaring

We asked Jed Norris a few questions about maple sugaring, given his many years of both engaging in it and teaching about it. 

What is your favorite thing about sugaring?

It's like an awakening from the cold winter months. You haven't really seen anybody in a while, so getting into a sugar house where it's warm and people are bustling around is almost like a rite of passage into the year. It’s like the neighborhood store where you get coffee, hang out, and just talk.

What's your sugaring background? 

My uncle was a sugar maker and my cousin has since taken over the operation, Norris Sugarworks in Starksboro. I remember going there as a kid, and we always brought eggs to hard boil in the sap and hot dogs to cook in the sap, and then we ate them. It was a quintessential experience for me. 

What do you think is most valuable about teaching kids about sugaring?

Sugaring has such a historical significance to this region, and a lot of families have some sort of a connection to it. Usually those kids have been helping their aunt or grandfather for years, so when we do sugaring, they shine. They're kind of the experts and teach their class. 

And the flavor maple is so essential to Vermont. Every Creemee stand in Vermont has it!

Is there a part of sugaring that’s generally more interesting to kids? 

I think the biggest "aha" is when we tap the tree, and sap is running, and you get that first drip. It’s like, “Yes!”  Then the kids–or people–get to catch sap in their hands, lick it off, and taste this subtleness of sweet. Just seeing their faces. It’s so impactful. When you pair that with seeing the evaporator–seeing clear liquid go in and that brown liquid come out–and then tasting the warm syrup? You've completed this cycle of amazing.

What's your favorite part of teaching about sugaring? 

Probably the tapping, because we get to use a tool. Drilling a hole in a tree or using a hammer to knock in a tap is kind of cool and not something kids do all the time. Then you can catch the wood pulp and squeeze it and feel the wet sap in it. To connect to where sap comes from and then to taste it is so amazing.  I've had many people ask me, “What do you add to it?” Nothing. You literally just boil sap. That's the cool factor. 

And when you're tapping a maple tree season after season, you develop a little relationship with it. I still remember “Tree No. 1” in the outdoor classroom. It’s since been taken down because it was completely rotted out in the middle, but in 2020, we’d done only about a week of sugaring when covid hit. So we had all those buckets up, and I was coming up daily to empty the buckets. And that tree was always full, always full. Even though the middle was totally rotted out, the sapwood was still there. Tree No. 1, she was awesome. 

What have you learned while teaching about sugaring? 

One thing is that we can't control everything. There are environmental factors that we just have to teach with. Like if you're tapping when it’s really cold, it's still going to be a pretty good day, but you know there's no chance of getting any sap. And we absolutely have no control over that. It's a good lesson. But when Mother Nature's lined up, it is so perfect.  

Last year, when we started sugaring programs we were already at the tail end of sugaring, and we didn’t want to put a hole into a tree unnecessarily that late in the season. So instead, we ratchet-strapped six foot logs to sugar maple trees. That way, kids could still do some identification of the live tree, but then drill a tap hole into just the log. And if sap was running, enough buckets were hanging that they could get sap from those.  It’s a climate change impact. The seasonality is not as consistent as it used to be, so we just needed to be ready.

Any new approaches to exploring sugaring with kids?

We used to do this game where all the sugaring tools were under a sheet, and you’d lift the sheet to look at and identify them. [See last activity on this page.] But last year, we handed out the tools at the end of the day. Kids mingled as we played a song, and when it stopped, you had to find a partner to talk about your tool, what you thought it did, and where you’d seen it during the day. It was a good review of the day. Like a story.

Then we did a taste test using a maple syrup flavor guide. It's this wheel that has tons of flavors, but we only used ones that we thought kids would most be able to understand, like butterscotch, coffee, chocolate, or berries, and we posted signs with these flavors on the walls. Kids did this mindful taste test and then would go stand at the flavor that they’d tasted. Then we all talked about it. And it was really cool to see kids being flavor detectives instead of doing a “Did you like it or not?” taste test. They were all tasting the same thing, but getting different flavors, so we had a cool discussion around how flavor is different to you than it is to me. It made taste testing super accessible, and it was such a discussion starter.

Anything else you want to share?

I think anybody and everybody should be encouraged to go out into their communities, or neighboring communities and look for that steam coming out and stop in. Sugar makers are super friendly and super hardworking, so be respectful, but definitely go taste test. It's the best.