PURE Maple Syrup Season

                                      Tight Sugar Maple Buds Promise Pure Maple Syrup

       
This article is from 2011, so some of you may already have come on this ride, but this is similar to what we do today.  Now, however,  we put out 100 taps and do the majority of the cook-off at the cabin.   We are still and always will be a ' small family operation ' but not selling our product.  Come along, and I will  give you a taste of what we are up to to break up winter.     
                        
~Saturday~April, 2011

Those of you who follow, already know that I have teased my dear love, Bill, about tapping just 6 trees. Well folks, he got the bug, and actually increased his productivity times 3, thus using 18 taps instead. I am no longer teasing. He worked so hard, for two days, a total of 21 1/2 hours, just to ' cook off ' his 35 gallons of maple sap from just a few of our hardwood trees.

Feast Your Eyes! Just look at that gorgeous amber-colored, PURE Maple Syrup. Is it ever delicious!

Follow along, and I will fill you in on what he did to accomplish this time-consuming process, the homemade, small family-produced way.After tapping the trees, a daily trip to the woods, is required, to collect the clear maple sap,as it collects in the pails, one drip at a time. This happens until you have enough sap to start your cook-off.

Depending on the weather, preferably, warm sunny days, cold nights, the pail slowly fills with sap that is rising from the bottom of the trees as the days lengthen and warm. Once the sap reaches the tight maple buds and gives nourishment to open them, the sap run is over. Only the good Lord and Mother Nature, determine the length and quality of the maple sap run., thus the quality of the syrup. Too many warm/hot days and warm nights means cloudy sap and the sweetness turns sour.
Looking at the sky, tells us that there may be another storm coming in, whether it's rain, snow, hail, wind, only time will tell. It's those dark, bottom clouds, that are telling us that we may be dumping tomorrow's run.
There is nothing as tempting, as an ice cold drink of sap, right out of the bucket, right off the tree, especially when you're a curious youngster. Sweet!It's hard to believe, that the clear sap is going to turn out to be a lip-smacking delight of pure maple syrup, as it lays in the pockets of a waffle.
Straining the sap several times on it's way to the cooker, is necessary to remove any bark, etc, that may have fallen into the bucket of a small family operation. The plastic tubing used by the big-time producers that put the maple syrup on your tables, eliminates this step.
Did you know that a turkey fryer has multiple uses? This weekend, it was used as an evaporator. Bill is pouring pre-heated sap into the final evaporator/kettle, to quicken the process.

We are cooking outside because we do not have a sap shack with fans and vents, so we are using Ma Nature to evaporate the steam that is created during the cook-off.

The first kettle is full of sap on the woodstove in the garage to pre-heat the cold sap.

From there, it is transferred with Bill's coffeepot, to the next pre-heat/pre-boil pan on the stove in the garage/canning section. It saves a lot of the time required to boil off 35 gallons of sap, to the syrup stage.

This was Sat. The sap finally started to boil in the make-shift evaporator in the late morning. We shut down the cook-off at 8 p.m. and started up again at 7 a.m. the next morning.~Sunday~

Just what we didn't need----another 3 1/2 inches of snow, sleet and wind. Wet, packy stuff that will most certainly mean dumping todays sap from the buckets, if this keeps up.
Many hours later, and the sap is starting to take some color and enhanced sweetness. A bit of this in my coffee was sure a treat with the cold wind.

Bill had to pull the operation into the edge of the garage door, set up wind blocks, and hope for the best.
There is a lot of hurry-up and wait, going on during the making of maple syrup for our family. And, a lot of steps. As the sap begins to boil, it leaves a froth that usually gets skimmed off the top, more for something to do, than any other purpose.
The entire process, in our case is for the ' fun of it.' The only profit we make is to see the smiles on the faces of our family as they consume the finished product. We spend hours watching so the cooker does not over boil and chance loosing the entire batch. It took 22 hours out of two days of cooking, to remove the water/moisture off the 35 gallons of sap to make 9 1/2 pints (1 gallon plus 1 1/2 pts.) of pure syrup. That's a long time. If we were to do this for a living, we would have to put out 30,000 taps and spend a fortune just in fuel to truck the tapped sap to production.

No, we only want enough for the kids to enjoy with their families, a taste.

It has given us a chance to break up winter a bit and utilize the beautiful hard maple trees we have on our property for other than firewood and lumber. The GrandLoves have had a ball watching and sneaking sips of sap, gathering, learning, so they, too can do this someday for their kids.Maple Syrup Season has been something that Bill and I both have seen as kids and we grew up learning. Only now, are we really learning to understand how time-consuming such a love is.

There are no pictures of pulling the pan from the fire, quickly straining the syrup through a sieve lined with 3 layers of dish towels, reheating and getting into the jars. This part has to happen quickly before loosing the benefit of the hot syrup. It's the ' breathe-holding ' moments.

All for the glory of that liquid gold in a canning jar.

Now to clean up after the fact. Any outdoor cooking kettles, pans, etc, that sits on an open flame for so long, gets tarnished with gases and soot. The best way to guarantee a quick clean-up, is really quite simple, if you remember this easy tip. Simply, wipe any liquid dish detergent on the outside of your pan before setting it on the flame. Even tho, this one had been on the flames twice, all day long, a nylon scraper easily took the burned on surface right off. Just rinse and dry., that simple.

I have done this even on my cast iron over a camp fire, and it cleans up so fast. If the pan is on the fire for just one use, all you need to do is to wipe it off with paper toweling or just spray it off. You cannot ask for an easier clean-up than that. Give it a try the next time you set a coffee pot, pan or griddle on an open fire. You will be amazed.I hope you have enjoyed jaunting the muddy trail with us in our quest to tempt our taste buds. It's been a blast from the past for me and I enjoyed every minute of it with my patient hubster, Bill, and the GrandLoves.

If you ever get the chance to do this with your loved ones, DO IT! I know, I know, it's takes an incredible amount of time, it is exhausting, it does not pay to do it on our small scale, in fact we went in the hole, but do it anyway. It is so worth it's weight in gold in more ways than one. Your heart will leap with satisfaction of creating something golden and delicious for your family. Furthermore, they will thank you in hugs and kisses. Now, what a better reason to make pure maple syrup, or liquid gold, as we call it! It's fantastic!!!!!

BlessYourHearts and ThanksForStopping