But real Vermonters recognize the Sugaring Season as their Fifth Season. And it makes Vermont the nation's largest producer of pure maple syrup. Sugaring Season falls between winter and spring and begins when winds out of the south raise daytime temperatures well above freezing, while the frozen snow-packed earth and New England's general arctic atmosphere plunge it back below 32 degrees at night. Here in Central Vermont, the heart of the great Northern Forest that stretches from the Adirondacks of New York to Maine, the flow of sap means that it is again time to practice Vermont's most traditional occupation, sugaring, the tapping of mature maple trees to gather about 40 gallons of sap to be boiled over a wood fire, to obtain a single gallon of sweet Vermont pure maple syrup. . Maple syrup is graded by color.
Most sugar producers prefer the extra fancy for their own tables.
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