There is only a small area of the world that can actually produce maple syrup. The circled area includes parts of southern Canada and the Northeast portion of the United States.

Quebec is the largest producer of syrup in the world.
Vermont is the largest in the US.

Everyone collecting sap seems to have their preferred collection method. In Chardon, they use buckets as they did 100 years ago.  At Snell's Family Farm the staff prefer the clear bags because they believe that the bags thaw out faster in the morning sun. I've also seen metal pails and tubing on the trees in southern Maine.

A farm staffer offered us a taste of the sap right from the tree. It tasted like sweet water, not at all like the final product. My daughter didn't care much for the sap; she was after the sweet, thick syrup, "the real stuff."

The sap from the tree is boiled at a sugar house. Boiling sap is monitored closely so that the evaporation process concentrates it to the color and consistency of syrup.

The kids are  fascinated with the equipment in the sugar house. Most sugarhouses welcome visitors when there's steam rising from their sugar house. That's the telltale sign that the sugar house is running and there's someone happy to pass the time chatting with a visitor interested in sugaring.

In the final stages, the syrup is filtered. This is a 3-layer filter that rids the hot syrup of its "sand," a product of the boiling process.