They're getting maple syrup from trees with a modern twist in Sharon, Massachusetts

Tapping a tree for maple syrup is a tradition in New England. They're doing it with a modern twist at the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary in Sharon, Massachusetts.

"For some people, this is their first real understanding of how maple syrup is done and maybe their first time getting out into a place like this," said nature camp director Shawn Moriarty.

The section of the forest where trees are tapped is known as a "sugar bush," and Moriarty said the weather has to cooperate for sap to flow. Ideal conditions include nights around 25 degrees and daytime temperatures climbing into the upper 30s or low 40s. But this year, the season got off to a slow start.

"We would have tapped the third or fourth week of January, but this year it was too cold. We didn't tap until just before February vacation, so we're almost three to four weeks behind schedule," Moriarty said.

And while many people may picture thick syrup coming straight from the tree, that's not the case. It looks like water. 

"They think it comes out of the tree looking like syrup, which I can understand," Moriarty said. "At best it's two percent sugar."

The process itself has deep historical roots in New England.

"French explorers coming down through the Canadian Maritimes wrote about members of the Wabanaki Confederacy taking liquid from trees and making sugar out of it," Moriarty said. "That was an unknown process to Europeans. It became a form of currency for colonists. If I can make sugar, now I can trade with my neighbors. If I can make sugar, I didn't have to buy it from a British salesperson. You get into the 1800s, and it was freedom from sugar from the South, which was a real badge of pride in Massachusetts."

Today, Moose Hill still uses a small number of traditional buckets for nostalgia, but most of the sap is now collected through a gravity-based tubing system that runs through the woods from tree to tree. 

The sap eventually travels to a sugar house, where volunteers boil it down until it reaches exactly 219 degrees. That process concentrates the liquid from about two percent sugar to the 66 percent sugar content needed to become maple syrup.

While maple sugaring has been happening at Moose Hill since 1972, the focus here isn't on mass production.

"We're an educational producer. We're not making thousands of gallons of syrup. We'll make maybe 100 if we're lucky," Moriarty said.

Moriarty said the volunteers are part of what makes the experience so special.

"Knowing the people who help make it, knowing where it all comes from, and it's something special that happens here in Sharon," he said.

Visitors can buy the locally made maple syrup right at the sanctuary store.