Sugar Maple Sap Gathering

Ruth Whittemore, pictured here, grew up at Maple Grove Farm in Lyme, New Hampshire, where she and her sister, Polly, gathered maple sap at the end of each winter when the temperature would rise above freezing during the day. From the sap they made maple sugar candy. It takes 30-50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, which weighs 11 pounds. One gallon of syrup will make eight pounds of candy. Ruth and Polly also fed the chickadees, who perched on their fingers and ate seeds from their hands. In the last photograph, you can see one chickadee eating from her hand and another waiting on a tree limb for its turn.