Home»BIG CREEK HOMESTEAD»Wooded Habitats»Big Creek Sugarbush

I think the real reason so many people do maple sugaring is that getting something so good out of solid wood is just such a cool thing. Furthermore, it's a great opportunity to be outdoors as the weather warms. Big Creek Homestead is well suited for large pipeline sap collection sytem, but we just tap a few trees with the traditional galvanized bucket method. Some years we have sold "sweetwater" (maple sap straight from the tree) to a local resaurant as a seasonal specialty. Sugaring season overlaps with apple pruning season, which overlaps with mushroom innoculation season, which overlaps garden planting and firewood gathering seasons. Thus, we try to make enough maple syrup in a year so that we don't need to do it every year.
All the photos this group were shot at Big Creek Homestead, the photographer’s home near Marquette in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.