KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — Its Maple Sugar Festival time at the Nature Center and this year was a special one because for the first time in 50 years, they were dedicating a new sugar shack.
That’s the facility where the natural maple sap, which resembles water, is boiled down to the rich brown syrup that folks pour on their pancakes, at least those willing to pay the $4 to $5 a quart that it costs to buy the real thing.
It takes 40 gallons of sap, which drips slowly from spigots embedded in the base of maple trees, to make one gallon of syrup.
It’s a very work and energy intensive process that used to be the first cash crop of the season for many farmers in the upper Midwest and Canada.
The new sugar shack is named for Alice Batts-Apkarian, the daughter of H. Lewis Batts, the founder of the Nature Center. Her family gave a generous donation towards its construction.
She says she grew up at the Nature Center and remembers in the beginning that it was a magical process because the sap was boiled down in huge caldrons that hung over an wood fire in the middle of the forest.
A few years later, the original Sugar Shack was built and used large drums over open fires, and the building would be filled with the thick sweet smell of maple syrup.
She says that steamy process may be why that original structure began to fall apart, and they decided the time was right for an upgrade.
The new structure is wood frame and is built like a small rustic amphitheater with the natural focus directed at the stainless steel boiler in the center of the room. It’s built to accommodate school children, who come by the bus-load on field trips.
The wood fired evaporator makes up in efficiency what it lacks in romance, directing the smoke and steam and all those wonderful smells up through the roof through metal vents. It probably makes the Health Department happier.
Batts-Apkarian says she used to take the freshly made syrup and a paper cone full of snow and make a treat when she was a child.
She says she still puts it on vanilla ice cream, and for a long time admits she carried a small bottle of it with her everywhere, just in case she wanted it.
She hopes the new maple sugar shack at the Nature Center will continue to fire the imagination of kids for the next 50 years, if not longer.
