It takes between 30-40 maples to start a maple syrup business. . . takes about 30-40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. Even though the syrup is boiled it retains the vitamins and minerals that were in the original tree sap. Vitamin breakdowns of syrup vary not only from tree to tree but from whether it was collected early or late in the season. As a rough acerage, though, one ounceof maple syrup may contain 3-6 mg phosphorous, 10-30 mg potassium, 4-25 mg magnesium, 40-80 mg calcium.

Artifical maple syrup: supermarkets sell "maple-flavored" pancake syrup which is plain sugar and water, flavored with an artificial coal tar flavoring and dyed with a coal tar dye.

See also post about maple syrup from Roch in the molasses thread.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 29, 1999

Answers

the sap itself can be good to drink depending on all those factors too - nutritous w/o the work

-- Steve Hartzler (s.hartzler@usa.net), October 29, 1999.

Old Git:

I have been reading your posts for a long time. I have no idea what this one is about. Maybe you need some rest!

Best wishes,,,,,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), October 31, 1999.

My mother-in-law has a large sugarbush. Sugaring is very labor- intensive (that is, once the buckets have been filled), but an excellent source of usable sweet if sugar is unavailable. Superb barter item post-TEOTWAWKI .....

And you can grow ginseng very well under the sugar maples, providing you're willing to wait, say, five to seven years.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), October 31, 1999.