These days of cold, moon bright mornings, and sunny-windy-blustery days, with hard, sharp frosty nights are perfect for making maple syrup.I am always excited by maple sugar weather! Yesterday, standing out in the yard with Matt and Lisa, buffeted by a wild, west wind, it was easy to tell that it was sugar time. (They brought us down a wonderful little chicken house which will be featured soon.)
Back in the day my dad, brother and I tapped some trees and made a little syrup every year. I used to walk my tap line on snow shoes, dragging a plastic toboggan with buckets on it to hold the sap. Keeping the buckets upright was a cuss-worthy challenge. Later I acquired a fifteen-gallon barrel, which worked better, but was still heavy and hard to handle. And it still managed to roll off the sled about fifty times a day, no matter how I tied it.
Now we let a man who runs a local sugar bush run a tap line in our maple woods and he gives us syrup at the end of the run. He has tubing instead of spiles and catches more sap in a day than we did in a year.
Less romance, but I don't miss the sled.
An old milk bulk tank our maple guy has converted to catch sap at the bottom of our maple woods. We almost never see him, but can tell by the appearance of tracks and hoses that he is out working the woods.
These last five or six days have got to have been perfect for sap collection. Bright and sunny with temperatures into the forties and fifties (!) during the day yet below freezing at night. That's just what the doctor ordered!
ReplyDeleteIt's one of the many signs of Spring to see those buckets on trees or the drip from the tubing.
The local state park (Hills Creek) has a little sugar bush and had a ranger/naturalist run the lines for a couple of years. She/they couldn't sell their product (state food regulations) so they gave it away to park volunteers. Since we led bird walks in April and May....
Anyway, she got laid off last fall and I haven't seen any announcemnets that the park is doing demonstrations. I'm going to miss those two pints she gave us each of the last two years. *sigh*
That is so cool, boy, was it windy up there! I really enjoyed coming up and seeing you and Liz! I can't wait to see pictures with the chickens in it!
ReplyDeleteHow cool! I bet yours tastes 100% better than the store bought stuff.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I was working with a sales rep in Vermont, we would travel the back roads to call on his farm accounts. During sugaring it was pretty easy to find the farmers, all we had to look for was the steam plume and we could zero in on their sap house. John would visit with the farmers about their needs of our product and while I was waiting John would suggest that I throw some wood up on the pile next to the boiler. I quickly realized that the sales process would take a lot longer if the wood supply next to the stove was almost depleted, or at the least, rather low on our arrival. The quickest sales call was at the farm with the largest pile of wood by the stove when we arrived. Probably another sales person had just left the farm.
ReplyDeleteNice arrangement, you only catch his tracks and get syrup after he boils it down. I like the adding wood story.
ReplyDeleteSound like a sweet deal to me. :) I always thought it would be fun to do all that. Until I found out how much sap it take to make a gallon.
ReplyDeleteKnowing me I would burn it to boot!
Nothing compares to real maple syrup.
ReplyDeleteI love your leaf pic. I'm liking easy more and more every year! I'll just buy my syrup thanks! It probably doesn't have the pedigree that your own does but I've never seen a sugar maple in my life so I wouldn't know the difference!
ReplyDeleteYour comment about the unseen maple guy reminds me of a Robert Frost poem - the sense of man working, but not seen. Hmmm . . I think it's Mowing.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to know that the sap is rising at Northview. Spring! Wonderful spring :-) This was a 'sweet' essay.
Joated, that is an amazingly cool story. I love to see the sugar bushes in full swing this time of year
ReplyDeleteLisa, we enjoyed seeing you guys too. We do get some wild wind!
Dani, Now that we are using it with venison we are using a lot..can't wait for this year's crop
ijssp, great story! Thanks for sharing!
Earl, it was a cool story. We often get invited to breakfast at his sugar house too, although we have yet to actually make it over there
Sara, it was a lot of fun. No maples near the house now or I would do a little on the stove just for the fun of it. Our sugar trees are way over on the other side of the other farm so to speak (we have two old farms combined into one)
FC, we like it too
LInda, I'm pretty glad someone else is doing the boiling these days. it was brutal running my trees back in the day
cathy, thanks, I'm sure there is plenty more winter waiting for us, but I am enjoying this nice little interlude while it lasts/