ESL Student Blog: Liquid Gold - Maple Syrup

A few hundreds years ago the Native (Aboriginal) people, who were the first Canadian settlers, noticed animals licking the bark of the maple trees in early spring. Ever since, this ‘sweet water’ dripping from the maple trees in late winter/early spring has been collected to produce a very distinctive Canadian sweet – maple syrup.

The sweet liquid – sap – flowing in the maple trees contains just over 2% of sugar and needs to be boiled down to evaporate the excess water. The sap is collected into pails or directed into a network of plastic tubes and taken to a sugar shack – a building on the farm where the maple syrup and sugar are produced. 40 liters of sap are required to make just 1 liter of syrup! The longer the sap is boiled, the thicker, darker and sweeter it becomes.

Canadians enjoy this treasure provided by Mother Nature mostly on pancakes, waffles, or in form of sweet chewy taffies (candies).