At Wildwood Farm, we’re doing some light pruning of fruit trees, maples, and dogwoods. With each cut, small droplets of sap seep out of the trees and roll down the trunk. Some people will say not to prune when the sap is rising. We say better late than never – having a branch break off next summer because it was too long and had too much fruit is something we don’t want.
The glistening tips of each cut are a sight you’ll only see this time of year. And the sap flowing down the trunk reminds us of stories an old neighbor told us about growing up in Vermont. She grew up near a Maple Syrup ‘Farm’. A vast network of stents and pipes connected the trees to a central gathering station. She would taste fresh syrup just as the farm finished boiling off the water.
Of course, most ‘maple syrup’ these days is really high fructose corn syrup. If you thought that corn plants don’t have sap, don’t worry, you’re correct. It takes a laboratory to manipulate corn molecules into a sweet syrup form. The documentary King Corn explains the logic, environmental effects, and profits associated with corn syrup.
Who knows what humans will think of next? Japanese Maple Syrup?
The glistening tips of each cut are a sight you’ll only see this time of year. And the sap flowing down the trunk reminds us of stories an old neighbor told us about growing up in Vermont. She grew up near a Maple Syrup ‘Farm’. A vast network of stents and pipes connected the trees to a central gathering station. She would taste fresh syrup just as the farm finished boiling off the water.
Of course, most ‘maple syrup’ these days is really high fructose corn syrup. If you thought that corn plants don’t have sap, don’t worry, you’re correct. It takes a laboratory to manipulate corn molecules into a sweet syrup form. The documentary King Corn explains the logic, environmental effects, and profits associated with corn syrup.
Who knows what humans will think of next? Japanese Maple Syrup?
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