You see, you can only make syrup out of sap until the buds on the trees get so developed. After that, changes in the make-up of the sap cause it to be what syrup makers call "buddy". Instead of being clear like water, it becomes progressively more yellow tinted. It also loses it's sweetness. Syrup made from buddy sap is supposedly bitter. Nobody wants to go to the trouble of collecting and boiling down sap that makes bitter syrup.
With the weather forecast predicting daytime highs in the mid-fifties to even low-sixties (!!) and night time high above freezing to nearly fifty, those buds are going to develop at a rapid rate. I predict by the end of seven days they will be nearly open.
Time to pull taps.
So, this afternoon, when it was still early enough I felt I'd have enough time to boil down today's sap into finished syrup before I wanted to go to bed tonight, I went out to the woods to collect sap and pull taps.
A buzzard, aka turkey vulture was flying above the field. They migrate for the winter, and in the last two weeks have come back; the aerial carcass clean-up squad. During the cold months, it's the coyotes that clean up road kill. But in the warm months, the buzzards do a good job of it.
I watched him fly for a few minutes, but the wind in the field was brisk, and despite the sunny blue skies the air temperature was still only around forty degrees. Enough bird watching, time to get to the woods and out of the wind!
At each tapped tree, I removed the jug, emptied its contents into the 5 gallon buckets I had brought for carrying the sap, then pulled the spile from the tree. Some trees gave them up easily. Others had all ready healed around them quite a bit and required more muscle to get the tap out. Once the spile was removed, all that was left to show I'd tapped the tree was a small hole, about 1/2" in diameter. By fall it will be completely grown over--healed.
A few of the trees are really getting buddy. I feel confident that I made the right decision in pulling my taps now.
Looking waaaaayyyy up into the maples
zoomed in to the very top branches, you can see how big the buds are getting
It has been an up and down syrup season this year. That cold week really put a crimp in things, and now the weather seems to want to warm up quickly. I had my trees tapped for exactly 30 days. A bit short of the 6-week average that is sap run. In that 30 days, it was too cold for sap to run for about 6 days. Not in a row, but scattered a few here, a few there. It was too warm for sap to run for about three days. I'm estimating that I will end up with not quite two gallons of syrup from my 10 taps this year. Not great, but not too bad considering they only were active about 21 days. Some trees gave readily, a steady gallon a day in good weather. Other trees were stingy, giving only half gallon in an excellent day and a dribble in a bad day.
Two gallons of syrup in the cellar is nothing to complain about, though. It's a year's worth of syrup for us, plus some to give as gifts. At a current local market price of $10-15 a pint (depending on if you get it from the sugar bush, the farm store, or the organic foods store) and $30 or more a half-gallon, I feel like I have gold in my cellar!
Thank you, trees, for giving me your sap. Thank you, God, for giving me maple trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment