Christa Hein, of Bring the Farm to You, holds a section of a maple tree to discuss the outer and inner layers of bark. (Photo by Amy Phelps)

BELPRE — The Belpre branch of the Washington County Public Library welcomed spring with a special educational program Tuesday about the maple syrup process.

Christa Hein, founder, director and lead teacher of BringtheFarmtoYou.com, brought her farm to the library with an hour-long class discussing how maple syrup is made, from how Native Americans once started the process up to current methods.

Most of the globe’s maple syrup comes from the mid-Atlantic region, including Ohio, due to soil conditions being ripe for the maple tree, she said.

“Sap can be in a lot of things, but maple is traditional,” she said.

Sap only flows for a few weeks, Hein said. In Ohio, it’s around mid-February to March through the tree to the branches to feed the leaf buds in preparation for spring, and only when the weather is going through a freezing, then thawing cycle.

Hein uses a hammer to put a tap into the demonstration tree. (Photo by Amy Phelps)

The sugar being stored makes the leaf buds eventually break open, and when they do, the season is over.

“It is completely weather dependent,” Hein said. “That’s why the price goes up.”

Hein demonstrated how a tap can go into the tree, just into the sap wood section of the tree, which is right under the bark, to access the sap. The sap, which looks like water when it comes out, will then run out of the tap and into a collection device, now a bucket generally made of aluminum or plastic, a special plastic bag or into tubing that directs the flow to a collection site.

Any kind of maple tree can be used to make maple syrup, she said, though the sugar maple is known for having the highest sugar content. The trees must be at least 12 inches in diameter to safely put one small hole into it without permanently damaging it. She said it takes 40 years for a maple tree to reach that diameter.

Hein said the sap must be cooked in outdoor evaporation pans due to the amount of water needing to be evaporated out to make maple syrup.

Hein pours maple sap into cups for participants to sample. (Photo by Amy Phelps)

“For one gallon of syrup you’d need 40 gallons of sap,” she said.

The sap needs skimmed to get impurities out and then is warmed until it reaches 7 degrees above the boiling point. When the syrup is ready, it comes out of a scoop like a sheet, instead of running like a liquid.

She said the color is variable.

“The syrup is graded and the lighter the color, the better the quality,” she said, adding the lightest color is always the first batch of syrup from the season, and as the season changes, the syrup will get darker.

A person can drink sap on its own or it can be turned into syrup. Syrup that is cooked beyond its temperature and stirred becomes maple sugar, and it can even be cooled quickly to become a candy like taffy.

Bring the Farm to You has many educational programs, including apple cidering, bee keeping and spinning, among others. It regularly does programs for schools, libraries, churches, senior centers and festivals through the state of Ohio.

For more information about the programs, go to bringthefarmtoyou.com.

Go to wcplib.info/calendar for a calendar listing of upcoming programs in the Washington County Public Library system.