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Maple Syrup |
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We make maple syrup on the family farm in March and April. The first step in making maple syrup is selecting a maple tree of at least 12" in diameter (we only tap sugar maples) and drilling the hole. We use a 7/16" bit. Trees over 18" get two buckets, and those over 24" get three buckets. Into this hole we use a hammer to lightly drive a spout, also known as a spile. On the spout we hang a covered bucket.
The sap will run on just about any warm day in the winter, but it runs best in the spring when nights are freezing and the daytime temperature is in the 40s. On many days the sap doesn't run at all, and on others one spout may produce 2 gallons of sap, or more. The sap is as clear as water, and very slightly sweet. When the sap is running, most buckets are gathered once a day. On this day, most buckets were half full, as you can see in the buckets hanging on the tree. I wish the sap ran that well every day!
We boil with a homemade stove and pan. You can see the smokestack at the other end of the stove. After filtering, the sap is first poured into a smaller preheating pan, (nearest the smokestack) and from there the sap is siphoned into the larger boiling pan. Wood goes into the door just out of sight in the foreground.
It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup! We usually boil until we have about 8 gallons of syrup, and then pour the foamy, nearly finished syrup out of one corner of the pan. Harmless minerals, known as sugar sand, will slowly settle in finished syrup, so to remove as much as possible, the syrup is poured through a double filter into the milk cans in the background. For the final filtering, we either allow the syrup to settle and then pour the clear syrup off the top, or we do the final filtering through a prefilter and a thick syrup filter. The clear syrup is heated to at least 180 degrees on a wood stove in our "sugar shack" and then canned.
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| Home | Alaska Hunting | Alaska Fishing | Whitetail Hunting | About Me | ORDER |