Is it a nod to Valentine’s Day that trees offer us their own sweet treats during the month of February?  Nature’s valentine takes the form of sugar maple sap, which flows for about six weeks, from mid-January to the end of February. During this time, the sap can be tapped and transformed into delicious treats like maple sugar, syrup and even candy.
The annual Rockwoods Maple Sugar Festival will show visitors how to work this magic in their own backyards.
“We take what comes from the tree and turn it into syrup,” said Rockwoods Reservation naturalist, Anna-Lisa Tucker, summarizing the process.
The 2010 Maple Sugar Festival is free and open for the whole family. It takes place on Sat., Feb. 6 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Department of Conservation’s Rockwoods Reservation in Wildwood—earlier than in previous years so as to give visitors plenty of time to put into practice what they learn about maple sugaring.
Participants will discover firsthand how simple it is to identify maple trees, and the proper technique to tap them, boil sap and filter it into syrup and sugar on their own to enjoy at home.
“While the sugar maple is the best, you can do it with any maple tree,” Tucker pointed out.
Activities during the event include guided hikes that will reveal the history of the process, and show how colonists created tasty products from the maple sap by cooking it down in giant copper kettles over an open fire.  New, this year, will be a raffle to win delicious maple products and tree tapping equipment.  Kids will delight in trying sugar on snow, a unique treat created when maple sap meets the winter white stuff.
Of course, one of the most popular attractions is getting to taste the authentic maple sugar and syrup itself.
“Usually the common store brands we eat now are made from high fructose corn syrup,” Tucker said. “A lot of people think that’s real maple syrup when, in fact, it’s not.”
Visitors are often surprised at the distinctive taste of the real thing.
Sugar maple sap has the highest sugar content – about three percent – and produces the most sugar per gallon of sap collected.  Still, it requires cooking down 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to yield one gallon of syrup.
Romantic notions aside, trees don’t really offer up this sweet gift to honor our Valentine’s holiday—the cycles of nature are actually tugging at their heartstrings.
February is prime maple sugaring season in Missouri because it produces the right weather conditions. The combination of below freezing temperatures at night and above freezing temperatures during the day arouses the trees—as if to send their hearts aflutter—and the sap begins circulating. The greater the night-to-day temperature difference, the more the sap flows.
But the love affair is fleeting. Come March, chemical changes in the sap end the sugar production season.
“The Native Americans are the ones who figured this out,” credits Tucker.
They would setup “sugar camps” near a stand of sugar maples each year to make sugar. Native Americans, in turn, taught the secret to early colonists.
The settlers refined the technique by drilling small holes in the trees and placing hollow taps to draw the sap into wooden buckets. Back at the “sugar shed,” the sap was boiled down over an open fire.
It’s a slow process, requiring almost 40 hours of boiling to produce a gallon of syrup.
Depending on how long the sap is boiled, a variety of products can be made, from hard sugar to syrup. The most common product was maple sugar blocks, because the sugar could be shaved off and used all year—or even traded for other goods. By the 1890s, cane sugar became cheaper to import as a sweetener so maple sugar production shifted to syrup instead.
Many think of Valentine’s Day as a time to celebrate relationships. As an example of good conservation, maple sugaring demonstrates a harmonious relationship between people and nature.  Properly done, tapping sap from maple trees does not harm them, and creates a delectable product from a renewable resource.
The Conservation Department’s Rockwoods Reservation is located at 2751 Glencoe Road, off Highway 109. Visitors are encouraged to dress for cold weather, as most of the event will take place outdoors. For more information about the Maple Sugar Festival on Sat., Feb. 6, call 636-458-2236.