One of my photographs has been selected to be part of the AVA’s 2015 Juried Summer Exhibition in Lebanon, NH by Susan Strickler, Director, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH.
Of the 331 works by 189 artists from 86 communities throughout Vermont and New Hampshire, only 59 works by 50 artists were accepted for this show.
The photograph selected was one from my series of traditional family sugar house’s in the area. This image from a series of four featuring a local Hartland, VT sugaring family was also exhibited in a group photography show in Pittsfield, MA at the Whitney Gallery.
Maple Sugaring Series
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Farmer feeding wood into the maple sugar evaporator inside the family’s Vermont sugar shack.
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When you buy real natural maple syrup (as opposed to factory produced artificially flavored corn syrup), you are supporting a way of life. In rural area through out New England, local farmers tap maple trees on their land and use traditional wood fired evaporators to boil and reduce the sap into sweet liquid gold. This sugar house in Hartland Four Corners was build in 1954. Four generations of have been involved in the annual spring ritual of harvesting and producing sweet syrup from maple sap in this hot and steamy sugar house.
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When a bucket fills with maple sap, the sap is collected and dumped into a holding tank. Once the holding tank is full, the sap is transported to a sugaring house, where all of the equipment is kept. The sap is poured into a maple syrup evaporator; that’s where it is boiled down. The evaporator is crucial to the maple-syrup-production process. Maple sap is mostly water, and all of this water must be boiled out of the sap to concentrate the sugars into syrup.
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When the sap is poured into the maple syrup evaporator, it is first heated through with steam. The evaporator produces steam, and a series of pipes transports the cold sap through this steam. Once the sap is heated to almost boiling by the steam, it is delivered to large, flat pans where it is boiled until the water evaporates, leaving the sugary syrup behind. The syrup is then drawn into containers and filtered to remove any impurities. After it’s filtered, the syrup is bottled and ready to consume.
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Photography by Edward M. Fielding
Others in the series include these images: