[9급 지방직 영어 2023년 15번]

The traditional way of making maple syrup is interesting. A sugar maple tree produces a watery sap each spring, when there is still lots of snow on the ground. To take the sap out of the sugar maple tree, a farmer makes a slit in the bark with a special knife, and puts a “tap” on the tree. Then the farmer hangs a bucket from the tap, and the sap drips into it. That sap is collected and boiled until a sweet syrup remains—forty gallons of sugar maple tree “water” make one gallon of syrup. That’s a lot of buckets, a lot of steam, and a lot of work. Even so, most of maple syrup producers are family farmers who collect the buckets by hand and boil the sap into syrup themselves.