LUCAS — Jeff King thinks real maple syrup should be lauded as much more than the premier pancake topping.
Standing inside the sugar shack at Malabar Farm State Park, King extolled its nutritional value, bolding declaring that maple syrup is a superfood.
(While maple syrup has a high sugar content, it does offer small amounts of calcium, potassium, amino acids and a surprising amount of Vitamin B2.)
Malabar Farm kicked off its 49th Annual Maple Syrup Festival Saturday. King was one of about 40 volunteers at the free event, which offers a chance to learn more about the history and science behind maple sugar and syrup.
Shuttles and horse drawn carriage rides ushered guests between the visitor center and the woods. Draft horses trotted down a tree-lined lane where sap dripped slowly into metal buckets. Thin blue tubes crisscrossed between the trees, pumping sap into evaporator tanks.
In the woods, volunteers at three stations gave brief presentations on the evolution of maple syrup production overtime.
Native Americans were the first people to discover the sweet sap and develop methods for refining it. Women and children gathered sap in hollowed out guards and slippery elm baskets, then poured it into carved log troughs and boiled it down.
At the pioneer station, Mark Sommers discussed how pioneers made maple products without the luxuries of stoves, compressors and even thermometers.
Pioneers learned how to make maple syrup from the Native Americans. Neighboring families pooled their resources and worked as a group during a short, hectic sugaring season.
“It was usually about a four week period — late February, early March at the latest,” said Sommers, a seasonal worker and longtime Maple Syrup Festival volunteer.
Maple syrup production is heavily weather dependent.
“It has to go above freezing during the day, mid 40s, and below freezing at night, mid 20s, or something in that range,” King said. “ So that freeze-thaw cycle creates pressure inside the trees.”
That pressure pushes the sap down and out. But the work for maple syrup producers is just beginning.
It took pre-Civil War pioneers about 24 hours to boil sap down to just 40 percent water content, at which point it’s considered maple syrup, Sommers said.
Did you know?
Maple syrup that drips direct from the tree contains two percent maple sugar. The rest is water.
It takes between 35 and 45 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup, according to the Ohio Maple Producers Association. One gallon of syrup yields between seven and eight pounds of maple sugar.
According to Sommers, pioneers would save some syrup, but would keep boiling most of the product down into maple sugar, which had a longer shelf life.
Inside Pugh Cabin, guests could shop for variety of maple products, from staples like sugar and syrup to candy, popcorn and maple-infused coffee and tea.
The Maple Syrup Festival continues March 8, 14 and 15 from noon to 4 p.m. Visitors can stop in and tour Louis Bromfield’s “Big House” and stop by The Berry House to shop for handmade goods and watch fiber artists in action.
