The Long-awaited Maple Syrup Post

I'm a bit hesitant to even post this now, three weeks since I finished making syrup.  I mean, syrup season is done here, mentally I've moved on and it's time for early gardening.  However, there are still maple syrup festivals going on in my part of the state, so I guess I'm okay and not totally too late.

I made maple syrup for the first time in 2010.  I'd been thinking about it for several years, since we'd bought this little place here and found some nice sized maple trees back in the woods.  When I found out Mother-in-Law still had spiles (she is a wonderful source of antique and homesteading type things) and was willing to let me use them, well, that was all the little nudge I needed to jump into yet another grand adventure (aka crazy idea, depending on if you're asking me or DH to define it).

The first year was slim; I only tapped the two biggest trees, a total of six spiles, and evidently the weather wasn't too cooperative (I later heard it was a really bad year for syrup).  I also really didn't know what I was doing, having never actually seen tapping done or syrup being made; only what I'd read in books and online.  So it was a comedy of errors that netted me about 3 pints of pretty expensive syrup!  When you're trying to boil down sap over a turkey fryer, outdoors, in the wind, you go through rather a lot of propane (about 2 twenty pound cylinders worth). 

2010 Maple Syrup "harvest"

But, it was also the most absolutely delicious syrup I had ever tasted.  And DH and the kids concurred.  No more pseudo-maple syrup from the store for us.  No, our palates had been enlightened.  From there on out, only the real deal would do.

So, for the 2011 season, I was determined to make more syrup with less propane!  A real evaporating set-up would have been nice, but the price tag on an honest-to-goodness sap pan gave me sticker shock.  So, back to the turkey fryer, but with improvements.  Like getting it out of the wind, and lowering the pot much closer to the flame.

During the summer of 2010, while in the woods to pick blackberries, I identified more maple trees and marked them by tying baling twine around their trunks at eyeball height.  That way I would be sure to know which trees I wanted when late winter came and it was time to tap again.

I also figured out an improved way to secure my collection 'buckets' (aka empty, clean milk jugs) to the taps so that they would not blow off on windy days and spill (ie. lose, waste) sap like had happened my first season.

When the beginning of March came this year, I was ready!  I had my collection 'buckets', I had my spiles (okay, Mother-in-Law's spiles, but I'm pretty sure they're mine now), I had an improved fuel-efficiency plan for boiling down sap.  All I needed was for the weather to break from cold cold to warm days with freezing nights.

Before the first week of March had ended, the weather forecast looked promising.  As a trial, I tapped just one tree, with two spiles.  Sap slowly oozed from the tree and down the spile even as I was gently pounding the spile into the tree.  A thrill of excitement ran through me.  Sap was definitely starting to run. It was time!!

Through the next week, I added a few taps a day, making my way further into the woods (the side nearest the house seems to warm up first) and using the trees I'd marked back in July.  I got much more sap than last year, and much faster.  I was all ready boiling off the first 15 gallon batch of sap when DS2's 18th birthday came just four days after I'd tapped the first tree.

My new and improved 'bucket' attachment method made an enormous difference in the amount of sap I was able to capture.  It was pretty simple, really:  running a short piece of baling twine through the two holes on the side of the spile, through the handle of the milk jug, and tying it around the mouth of the jug.  Voila!  No buckets blew down this season! 

New and improved 'bucket' hanging method.

Sap collecting in the jug on a sunny day.

For 2011, I had 14 taps in 11 trees.  In about five weeks (which included a cumulative 8 days that the temps were too warm, then too frigid for the sap to run), I collected approximately 115 gallons of sap.  By hand, toted to the house in 5 gallon buckets, through a thawing wheat field (uphill both ways, yadda yadda yadda.  ;0)  The tractor was broken still.  Next year, it will do the toting for me.) 

All that sap boiled down to 2 gallons, 6 3/4 pints of syrup. 

The boiling off was definitely faster and more efficient this year, done in the garage with the overhead doors cracked open about 3" for ventilation, and by prewarming sap on the stove in the house before adding it to the boiling sap in the fryer pot.  Each 15 gallon or so batch took about 18 hours start to finish, mainly because I couldn't stay up all night boiling.  I'd start the boil at noon, shut it off at midnight, and restart again about noon the next day when I got done with my morning horse farm chores.

What I found very interesting this year was seeing how the color of the syrup changed as the season went on. Since I'd only done one batch last year, I was surprised to learn first hand how syrup changes grade from the beginning of the sap run to the end.



2011 syrup "harvest".
Seven batches of syrup, noting color/grade change.



My first batch was very light golden brown.  As time went by, and the weather warmed, the syrup changed to a red-brown, then brown, then a dark brown.  The taste was still maple syrup deliciousness, no matter what the color. 

The 2011 syrup season changed me from a casual syrup maker to a syrup making addict.  I will definitely  be making maple syrup for many years to come.  I all ready have customers lined up for next year (several people have asked to purchase syrup from me, should I produce more than what our family can consume in a year), and I am scoping out more maple trees for an expanded operation.  :0)

And best of all, DH is now thoroughly on board for this grand adventure.  Which means it really is a grand adventure, not just a crazy idea.  He's working on designing a wood-fired evaporator set-up (free heat from the woods + free sap from the woods = free syrup!) and talking to the local farm repair shop about welding up a sap pan from sheet steel for 2012.