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Photo gallery: How sweet it is

The Sugar Shack at Gaining Ground fired up some sweet treats.

Friends Jesica Chaya and Victoria Barry participate in a maple syrup taste test.

It’s a sure sign of spring when the sugar shack fires up at Gaining Ground. The hunger-relief nonprofit held its maple sugaring open house on February 27 and March 1, and invited the community to see the process and taste the syrup. 

While the shack is at Gaining Ground’s Virginia Road farm, the sap comes from more than 100 trees around Acton. The sap is boiled for hours; it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.

Photos by Jean Fain

Gaining Ground’s Sugar Shack, where visitors learn about the maple-sugaring process.
To determine the difference between farm-made and store-bought maple syrup, 9-year-old Ashe Caira does a blind taste test.
Assistant grower Ava Lublin watches over maple syrup production.
Assistant grower Maddie Weikel uses a hydrometer to test syrup thickness.
A close up of a maple sugar bucket.
Assistant grower stokes the fire of the evaporator, a vat for boiling maple sap to create syrup.
Weikel adds maple sap to the cooking syrup.
Grace Dettman, 4, and her brother Jack, 5, lead the line for the syrup taste test.

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