Maple sugaring surely sweet at Breakheart in Saugus

SAUGUS – Sweetness was in the air over the weekend at Breakheart Reservation where hundreds of visitors got to sample the natural goodness of maple syrup and witness firsthand how sap is extracted from the trees and boiled into one of America’s favorite toppings.Schoolchildren and scouts from Saugus and communities as distant as Pittsfield were treated to an educational twist throughout the week when their classes and cub packs traipsed through the woodlands to examine the pails and spigots protruding from the trees. They were introduced to what it means to sugar off, a process which marks the arrival of spring when the sap begins to flow in maple trees.The 640-acre Breakheart Reservation ? open year round and operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) ? is where people like regional supervisor Anthony Guthro enthusiastically explain how sugaring off was done in the days of the early colonists and Native Americans.With a group of Pack 83 Cub Scouts from Salem as an audience, Guthro on Friday showed how to use a two-man saw to produce thick, round pieces of wood which can be halved with a splitting maul and chopped further with an ax. But first he described the different uses for each tool to the information-hungry scouts.”We have to make the wood pieces small enough to feed the fire,” said Guthro, who accepted friendly wagers from the scouts on whether he could split a hefty chunk with a single stroke of his maul. The prize, if he proved successful, was an additional pancake and popcorn coated with fresh maple syrup, a treat offered to every visitor. A single hardy swing later and Guthro had earned himself the extra pancake, served at the end of the tour around an open fire pit where visitors can sit on rough logs and sip hot chocolate.In the sugar shack, DCR Camp Nihan Supervisor Charlie Petrucci was ready for the haul of sap from the woods, poured from buckets into 5-gallon blue plastic jugs and then into the steaming stainless steel evaporator.”We pour the sap into the warming pan first, so that we can screen out whatever might have made its way into the buckets on the trees,” he said, explaining how moths and ants are attracted to the sugary sap. “These strainers remove them, along with any twigs, before the sap is slowly released into the larger part of the evaporator.”Petrucci said each sugar maple tree produces about 10 gallons of sap during the season. He also clarified that sugaring off using hardwood as a stove fuel is no longer viable and is used solely for demonstration purposes, just as Guthro’s unwieldy two-man saw and calorie-burning splitting maul have given way to the gas-powered chainsaw and the hydraulic wood-splitter.The DCR ranger staff along with volunteers like Saugus resident Ed Murray from the Friends of Breakheart Reservation started on March 14 touring schoolchildren and non-profit organization groups through the five sugaring-off stations.”We had about 300 total come through today,” DCR staffer Rita Balfour said Friday. “Schoolkids and scouts. Everybody gets a pancake and everybody gets popcorn with maple syrup drizzled on it.”According to Gurthro, the weekdays brought a daily average 300 visitors and the weekend typically 500 per day.”It’s an annual event. People love it,” he said. “We show them how to identify a maple tree and how to appropriately tap it. Then we boil down the sap with the wood they helped to chop. We also tell them about the history of maple syrup, starting with Native American history.”On Saturday and Sunday, visitors paid $5 each for the privilege of learning about the process. Family groups were discounted. When the tours were over, many took advantage of the warm spring weather to hike deeper into the park to the two small lakes along the circular trail.