On March 7, an invitation-only event drew locals eager to learn about the annual rite of maple syrup making.
Ava Lublin makes her way through heavy snow to tap a maple on February 17. Photo: Ken McGagh/The Acton Bridge
Mark Congdon, right, Gaining Ground’s director of agriculture and volunteer experience, holds a maple sugaring spile as assistant grower Rachael Walton drills a hole into a tree on February 17.
With 40 gallons of sap yielding one gallon of the good stuff, maple syrup making is clearly a labor of love for the farmers of Acton’s Gaining Ground. Midwinter, assistant growers trudge through snow to drill holes in over 100 maple trees in town. A metal spile ushers sap from tree to bucket. Many trees are old friends and bear holes from tappings of years past. Sunny days and frosty nights make the sap run, at times overflowing the buckets. Later in the season, smoke pours from the wood stove in Gaining Ground’s sugar shack, fueling an evaporator that boils the sap until it concentrates as maple syrup, with a hydrometer measuring sugar concentration. This year’s batch was ready by March 5. The farm’s bounty varies: 2025 yielded 161 pounds of syrup; in 2024, just 43. On March 7, an invitation-only event drew locals eager to learn about this annual rite. In a taste test between Gaining Ground’s maple syrup and the supermarket variety, most folks easily discerned the difference.
Photos: Ken McGagh/The Acton Bridge
Sap drips from a spile in Acton on February 19.Rachael Walton empties buckets of sap on February 19.Ava Lublin, right, and Rachael Walton, assistant growers at Gaining Ground, talk to a passerby while collecting sap in front of the Acton Free Public Library on February 19.Sap is drawn from the evaporator into a hydrometer to measure its density.Sap is drawn from the evaporator into a hydrometer to measure its density. Farmers use the Brix scale to gauge sugar content.Farm Manager Johanna Flies feeds the sugar shack’s wood fire.The first syrup of the season is poured from the evaporator into a bucket on March 5.Gaining Ground Assistant Grower Ava Lublin stirs sap in the evaporator on March 5.Gaining Ground’s Ava Lublin carries a hose into the farm’s sugar shack on March 5.Ava Lublin pours syrup into a finishing pan to be boiled some more, the final step of the process, on March 5.Ava Lublin describes the maple sugaring process to visitors on March 7.Visitors huddle at the entrance of the Gaining Ground sugar shack to learn about the process on March 7.Silas McNamara, 7, of Acton, watches as his parents, Lindsay Ludwig and Brian McNamara, sample Gaining Ground maple syrup on March 7.Grace Dettman, 5, gets a view from above the Gaining Ground farm evaporator courtesy of her father, Josh, as Caroline Dettman, holding Pearl Dettman, 3, and Jack Dettman, 6, observe on March 7. Caroline Dettman is a Acton native; her father, Bob Brooks, lives in town and is a Gaining Ground volunteer.Ellen Farmer of Acton and her daughter, Vera Farmer, 10, sample Gaining Ground maple syrup on March 7.
