Sweet Treat From the Forest

One Story A Day (Book 4 for April)

1 Sweet Treat From the Forest Every year when spring arrives, my father announces it's time to visit our uncle's sugar forest. This year, I invited my good friend Jasmine. " To a sugar forest?" she asked. “ Is there really a forest where sugar grows?" Her questions were funny, but I under- stood her confusion. She's from Africa. They don't have maple trees there. And you need maple trees to make maple sugar. “ Well, not exactly, " I explained. " But there is a certain kind of tree used to make sugar. It's called a maple tree. " That spring Saturday morning, Jasmine and I were very excited. You could almost hear the snow melting. As we drove along, Dad told Jasmine about maple sugar. “ In Canada, for a few weeks in spring, maple trees send a special liquid up from their roots to the top of the trees. This liquid is called sap. It's 98 percent water. The remaining two percent is a natural sugar, " Dad explained.

" To make maple sugar, you make a small hole in the trunk of a maple tree and catch the sap. You then boil the sap. The water evaporates, leaving a sweet syrup. If you boil it long enough, it turns into brown sugar. Very sweet and very good to eat! " When we arrived, my uncle was making maple sugar in a big pot over a big fire. You could see the steam rising as the water evaporated. My father pitched in and helped. Jasmine and I just sat and learned. By the end of the day, there were big cans of sweet maple syrup and sugar. What Jasmine really loved was when my uncle put some hot syrup on the snow and it turned to candy. As we ate our maple candy, we walked in the forest, stopping to look in the buckets that my uncle had hung on the trees to catch the sap. Jasmine was laughing. “ I can hardly wait to tell my grandparents in Africa about this, " she said. " “ I can't imagine what Grandfather will say when I tell him I spent the day in a sugar forest! "