Annual maple sugaring thread - More pics added!

I tapped the maple trees on Monday February 12.  The sap barely ran at all that first week.
Sunday the 18th of February we received 8 inches of snow.

Toby came out with me to collect the sap.


ML took this of Toby and I bringing the sap back to the house.

I fell - hard - about 4 seconds after she took that picture. No sap salvaged that day
In the foreground is a bucket of sap in a snowbank to keep it cold during the week.

We had enough to boil down this weekend. We were busy Saturday so we had to do it on Sunday - a cold, wet, sleeting, snowy, rainy day.
Due to the weather ML suggested we use an electric roasting pan to boil down in. We did this beneath the garage over hang to keep the sap and ourselves dry.


ML is skimming of the foam. It is harmless but will make your syrup cloudy. Toby is soaked.


This is Foxy standing guard on a plow pile. She is so hairy the rain doesn't trouble her.


Just because the weather was miserable we didn't have to be. We had a cheese platter for lunch.
Toby's coat inthe first picture was saturated so he got a nice new dry one.


The roasting pan never reached a boil. I brought out the big gun - a propane stove.


The last picture is ML filtering the reduced sap into a big pot. The pot was put on the in-house stove to finish the process.
It is still boiling down to become syrup.

Thanks for sharing. I love maple syrup. I believe that my blood is actually 98% maple syrup. The fact that tree sap can be boiled down to maple syrup is irrefutable evidence that God loves us. And yes so is fermentation.

That's neat. I like real maple syrup. Don't have it as often as I'd like to though.

send your fellow Pennsylvanian down some maple syrup.

I was just in your neck,of the woods and wondered if anyone had trees tapped.

That is a labor of love and quite precious. At least it would be to me if I boiled down the sugarbush, to be shared with only the very highest tier of friends. What Phil does is up to him (obviously), but folks from away simply have no idea how many gallons of sap go into making a very small quantity of syrup.

I buy my grade B syrup which I far prefer over the various grade A's. The darker the better IMO. I can't always find anyone willing to sell it , or even if they even have any. It might not be as pretty, but it has the better flavor IMO. You will definitely not find it for sale unless you live near the sugarbush and show up to inquire during sugaring.

For those not near the sugarbush the real deal (grade A) is available on line. It is definitely not your "pancake syrup" that's available at your local market. FWIW, my nephews who are city born and bred don't appreciate it or like it, so I stock pancake syrup for them (it's their preference) and the adults get the real stuff. In fact I just recently fed the bugs in the septic system with that "pancake syrup". I assume they also liked it.

Yup, definitely a labor of love. However, the final product is worth it.

I was just in your neck,of the woods and wondered if anyone had trees tapped.

Tapping is a crapshoot. It is weather dependent. You need above 40°F days and below freezing at night.

When I first got into this I followed the local high school. Their ag program taps trees. But I realized after 3 years that they were following a school calendar not the weather.

So now I make the decision myself. This year I was a touch early and did not collect much the first week.

ShadowsDad and Freddy ,

It is indeed a labor of love but also great family time. We talk about our day as we collect sap together. We discuss each trees production. We discuss the weather. We just talk.

The boil down is a full day commitment. We read magazines, talk, play with the dogs and tend to the process.

It is a great way to combat "cabin fever" and to just get outside and appreciate nature.

"Appreciate nature" - ML helps me remove the taps and buckets at the end of the season. She personally thanks each tree for their sap and allowing us to have some.


"Labor of Love" - ML is by my side through the whole sugaring season. Yet she does not like real maple syrup, preferring the supermarket products. She does it for the reasons mentioned above and she likes spending time with me. Truly a labor of love on her part.

We have done a total of 3 boil downs so far. We did one this last weekend using a jury rigged fire pit. My usual set up for the fire pit was inadvertently plowed under in the last storm

It was a terrible day to cook down over an open flame 20°F amd 35 mph wind. I put up parts of a packing crate to block some of the wind.

This is grill is balance on odds and ends but it was stable. Here ML cooks a hot dog.


Our neighbor likes her hot dog cooked in the sap to add flavor to the hot dog.


Hot dogs are washed down with IBC rootbeer - kept cold in a snow bank of course.


We toasted marshmallow bunny Peeps. The sugar caramelizes and it is like creme brulee on a stick. Heaven.


It took about 5 hours. I needed another snack. Leftover pizza crisped up nicely.


The sap is filtered multiple times.


Once it is thick enough it is canned. The stuff in the tupperware is reserved to be added to the next batch and canned.


The season is probably over for us though I still have the buckets hanging. Maybe we will get enough for one more go.
Currently I have about 50 ounces of sap. That is pretty good for us.

Even in a brutal cold day it is fun to get outside to boil down.

Phil