Hundreds see annual maple tree tapping in Naperville

The beautiful spring weather brought out hundreds of people to the Naper Settlement's annual Maple Sugaring Days in Naperville this weekend to enjoy the day and learn how the city's earliest settlers made maple syrup.

“Unfortunately, even though it is fantastic weather to be out and about these days, it is terrible weather for what we're doing here,” Justin Stech, a Naper Settlement educator, said Sunday to a crowd of more than 200 at the maple tree-tapping.

Were it not for the microphone and speakers Stech wore so his lesson could be heard by the large crowd, he would have looked like he came straight from the Victorian Era.

His demonstration showed how the people of the 1800s extracted maple sugar and syrup, which were used as sweeteners.

Stech said they've been having a hard time trying to get enough sap from the tree to use to make syrup, sugar and other foods because the weather got too warm too quickly.

Tree sap stays in the roots during the winter, but when the ground thaws it begins moving up the trunk to the branches so the tree can use it for food. Stech said if the weather warms up fast, the sap will shoot up through the trunk too quickly for them to get much yield.

A few hundred feet from the tree, the second step of the labor intensive maple syrup-making process was being tended to by Joe Kratz and William Watkins, Wheaton-Warrenville High School students. The teens tended a fire under a large cast iron caldron where several gallons of sap was slowly being reduced.

“This will probably take you a week to use 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup,” Watkins said. “So when you are at the store complaining that it is like $5 per syrup bottle, you gotta remember how hard it is to make.”