Transcript:

Sugaring Time ambience: sap drippingThat's a sound that traditionally signals the beginning of Spring in northeastern United States -- maple sap dripping into buckets, to be used to make maple syrup. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.David Marvin is a maple syrup maker, and the owner of Butternut Mountain Farm in Johnson, Vermont.Marvin: There is a lot of romance and sort of nostalgic feeling about maple. A large part of it, I think, is because we're really the first crop of the year in the North. It comes before anybody could even dream of putting in a garden or get going with haying or any of those kinds of things. So it spells springtime.Because of that nostalgia, maple harvesters are often still referred to with a name leftover from the bygone days when maple sap was primarily made into sugar. Marvin: We're called maple sugar makers in Vermont but really we're maple syrup makers. We became syrup makers about 1880 when white sugar became cheaper than maple sugar, and from that time on most maple was sold as syrup, not sugar. Prior to that time it was a staple item for colonial farmers. It's thought that maple syrup was first discovered by Native American Indians, perhaps by boiling down icicles that dripped down off of a wounded tree and developing the maple flavor.Most people think of maple flavor and associate it with maple syrup, but maple is used in some more exotic ways, perhaps. In Vermont we have a new business which uses maple syrup in a maple flavored bourbon drink, and as a distilled maple spirit. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.