Update on Sugarin'

So, after four days of boiling sap outside on the firepit, I finally had some sap boiled down enough to bring inside to finish. I set it up, but then forgot it was on the stove! BIG MISTAKE! When I heard the fire alarm go off, I raced upstairs but it had boiled over. I had a huge mess, but some redeemable syrup. I ended up setting some aside for "candy" because it was too sticky/thick to use for anything else. It all tasted a little smoky because of the wood fire. It also was a little burnt from the boiling over inside, but still edible and maple-flavored. I still have another batch ready to finish inside (I'll be watching this more closely)! And I have another 10 gallons of sap that need to be cooked down outside. Unfortunately the weather (which was great last week) has turned wet and I'll have to wait to do it. I have learned one thing. Syrup is expensive for a reason! :-)

Sugarin' Time

It's sugarin' time. The first tree we tapped is still not producing, but the 4 other maple trees we put taps on have produced about 16 gallons now. We started tapping for real on Sunday, so it took about 3 days to collect that amount. As you can see, I'm having fun on this new adventure. Never done this before--so who knows what we'll end up with! :-)

Here you see my five-match-fire. I started it with two matches and went inside to get some supplies. When I returned it was smoking, but not burning, so I started it again (3 more matches). Clearly I am a highly skilled mountaineer-type person.

Here are the additional, high-tech, sap-gathering instruments. Bret bought me a fancy pants bucket with a lid, but since we need 40 gallons of maple sap for our 1 gallon of syrup, clearly more buckets were needed.

Here you see the 16 gallons of sap (very clear) which I collected and am slowly boiling today. Hopefully we will have success (success in this case is defined as some syrup for the Saturday morning pflinzen (aka crepes))! Well, back to the fire!