The Maple Tree Farm by Katie, Kelsie & Caleb

After church on March 17, 2013 we went to a farm called the Lusscroft Maple Tree Farm.  We first drove to the farm that was about 20 minutes away. The drive was beautiful. On the way we saw a zoo called the Space Zoo. They had water buffalo, lamas, deer, and a big bear, but it was locked up for the winter. We didn’t go to the zoo, Mom said that we could check it out some other time. Then we sang a song that reminded us about water buffalo. Once we got there Mom got confused where to park. Once we figured out where to park (with the help of our smartness of course) we had to go on a long walk to get to the barn. Once we got to the barn we went in, but it was next to impossible to open the barn doors. When we got in there it smelled like pure maple syrup. We would of paid $15 just for the smell, it smelled that good. We would have paid 100 bucks for the syrup. We thought it was really cool how they made the syrup. They had a plastic tank just outside the barn where there was tubing that connected from the trees to the tank.  Once the sap was collected in the tank, the tank was moved to the barn and the sap was then emptied out into a maze like machine.  While the sap traveled through the maze, it was being heated up to a certain temperature. After reaching a certain temperature, the sap is then filtered and finally bottled. The people were really nice to us. We got to taste the maple syrup and it was the best maple syrup we’ve ever had. (It tasted a little different, but in a good way). We went back outside. We listened to a man share with us all about the sap and the trees. After a while we kind of got bored so we looked around at some other stuff. Before we went inside we looked at how people made maple syrup long, long ago. The sap inside the little tin was almost frozen.  Back inside the barn, one of the volunteers started talking to us. He talked to us about the farm being in the newspaper and asked us to look in the book to see all the articles. Once we looked at the articles he started to talk to our mom and they talked for a long time. My mom learned about a lot of fun things to do in New Jersey. After that we started back to the car. It was a very long walk but we finally made it. The trip to the maple tree farm was a great experience

During our trip we learned a lot. We are going to share nine facts:

#1 sugar maple sap contains 2-4% sugar

#2 the natural sugar of the maple tree is sucrose

#3 it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup

#4 warm days 40-50 degrees in the days and below freezing at night makes the best syrup

#5 maple trees should be at least 40 years or older to begin tapping

#6 maple trees should also be at least 10inches in diameter before tapping

#7 maple syrup contains 66.9% sugar

#8 one table spoons of syrup contains 50 calories

#9 maple syrup has to be 219 degrees in the boiler to go to the next step

Katie checking out the old fashioned way of tapping the trees.

The white tank is where the sap goes after leaving the trees.

A close-up of a tap in a tree

The sap entering the maze and beginning the process of heating

The sap going from the tank to the maze inside the barn

Part of the filtering process

The finished product - YUMMY!

Tubing from all the trees to the tank

The Trio - after being educated on maple syrup!