Yesterday was the 40th annual Maine Maple Syrup Sunday and this transfusion-like plastic tubing is the only type of equipment that we found collecting the sap from local maple trees:
Such tree-to-tree tubing systems can collect sap from hundreds of trees at a time. It appears that labor-intensive collecting with buckets or cans mostly has gone the way of rotary phones locally, at least since 2017, when this image was taken:
Vermont traditionally is the leading state producer of maple syrup by far (2.5 million reported gallons in 2022), followed by New York (845 thousand gal.) and Maine (672 thousand gal.)
On Maine Maple Syrup Sunday weekends, many producers here open up their “sugarhouses” and offer syrup samples and demonstrations of how the glorious pancake enhancer is made. (Images taken in Sargentville, Maine, on March 26, 2023 [tubes], and March 19, 2017 [can].)