Ever wanted to make your own maple syrup? With a few tools of the trade and a maple tree in the backyard, you’re just a few easy steps away from coating your waffles and cakes in homemade maple syrup.

Lisa Gauker held up a bottle of store-bought pancake syrup. “Is this really maple syrup?” the recreation and special events supervisor for the Berks County Department of Parks and Recreation asked.

MAPLE SYRUP is very much a year-round essential in my kitchen. But there’s always a poetry in the thought that the sap boiled down to produce the syrup we love so much is tapped from maple trees in ...