If you've ever travelled outside the city to one of the many maple syrup festivals that take place across Ontario, you'll know how enjoyable the whole process of making maple syrup can be. It's one of those "fun for the whole family" events where people can witness the whole process from the tapping of trees to watching the sap boil, to the sweet, sweet reward of maple syrup or candy at the end.
Sugar maples are considered the ideal tree for making maple syrup, but a number of other types of maple trees, including the Norway maple, have sap that can be used as well. And while they're not so obvious in winter, Toronto has an awful lot of maple trees. Not a full stand of forest where someone could set up a sugar shack with sap lines and make syrup on-site, but certainly enough that if lots of people with maple trees in their yards came together and pooled their sap, it would make for one heck of a downtown sugaring off.
Those wise folks from the fruit-picking organization Not Far From the Tree want to be the ones to host that party. Not content to just pick fruit, berries and nuts during the harvest season, they want to tap some downtown trees, pool the sap and have a big ol' maple syrup party.
This latest project, amusingly known as "We'd Tap That - Syrup in the City", plans to work with interested homeowners. One or two trees in a private yard won't provide enough sap to make syrup - it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, and the process of boiling it all down can't really be done in a home kitchen - but if enough people are interested in combining their sap, Not Far From the Tree is prepared to organize an event in a local park or community space where people can come and take part in the process.
They are looking for homeowners with maple trees interested in taking part, particularly people who can take care of harvesting the sap from their trees on their own. The group will first send out volunteers (including an arborist) to assess the health of the trees (urban trees are under a lot of stress) and to set up the taps. The harvesting process creates only one small hole in the tree, and has no effect on the overall health of the tree. From there it's just a matter of emptying the buckets a couple of times a day for a few weeks, then all the sap will be pooled and cooked down.
Not Far From the Tree are also looking for volunteers to help collect sap (they will provide training on how to do this correctly), as well as a list of supplies and donations to help them pay for associated costs. If you've got a healthy maple tree or want to volunteer, please check out this post on the Not Far From the Tree blog for more information on how to get involved.
We will, of course, have more information on the big sugaring-off party once it becomes available.
