Yesterday we hosted a Sugarin' Off Day at Redwoodshire. After a few days of strong running sap, we sent out an open invitation to local friends and family to join us for a day of outdoor sap boiling. Throughout the day, friends and family wandered in and out, keeping us company and taking part of the boiling process. I think we had around 30 people over the course of the day- though it never felt like that many.
The Laird got out to our Sugar Camp nice and early, 8:30am and got set up and started the fire. I baked a batch of Maple Doodles to share and got the kids bundled to head outside. The weather was perfect, a beautiful 40 degrees F. We expanded our set up and added another pan to our evaporator- leaving us with a triple pan system. The Laird's co-worker also let us borrow a couple pans, which definitely helped speed up our evaporating process. We had a warm week, where some days the temperatures didn't drop down below freezing. We had to put our bottles and buckets of sap into the fridge and freezer to prevent the sap from spoiling. Sap must be boiled down within a week and kept cool to prevent it from going bad. We estimate that we collected about 25 gallons of sap this week, which doubles our production from last week (10.6 gallons).
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| Feeding the chickens |
We expected people to come and go, hanging out for an hour or so. Some people stayed the whole day! Which means they discovered the joy of sugaring! Yay! We shared lots of things we've learned about Maple Sugaring, from the trees identification, to the process of the sap running, to the actual boiling down to syrup. It's really awesome to share and teach people about things we've learned. Everyone got to taste last weeks batch of maple syrup, and be amazed by how delicious sap tea is!
One beautiful part of the day was having all the kids running around- ALL DAY! I think our kids spend at least 6+ hours outside yesterday. One of our photographer friends took some really cool tin type photos of some of the group. Check them out:
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| Holding very still for 6 seconds |
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| Developing the tin type |
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| Redwoodshire Maple Sugarin' Day |
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| Niter/ Sugar Sand caught in the filter |
Our 25 gallons became about 2 quarts of maple syrup. The color was a bit darker amber color than last weeks Light Amber grade. Though the color was darker, the flavor was still quite light and not very maple-y. One improvement to our processing was the purchase of Sugaring filters and a filter stand. Last week, we had trouble filtering with cheese cloth & coffee filters, set into a funnel. It was basically as if we didn't even filter our syrup. A thick layer of niter sugar sand settled out on the bottom of our 2 jars of syrup from last week.
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| Filter stand & filters- A Must Have with home sugaring! |
At the end of the day, as we were boiling down to 7 degrees above boiling water, some of the grown ups played board games and the kids continued their play from the rest of the day. Our kids had so much more fun on this sugarin' day, than last weekend when it was just our family. And boy did they fall asleep fast! We made some pancakes for dinner and enjoyed our time together.
The Laird has been reading the Maple Sugaring forums, and learned that people who sugar consider the hobby a bit of an addiction. What starts out as a cool thing to try out, grows into something you want to keep doing. We started out spending as little money as possible- the basics. 10 spiles, 5/16" tubing, buckets, water jugs, 4" boiling pans.... then we added the filters and filter stand & a metal skimmer.... we planned to purchase a hydrometer next year, if we decided to do it again. Well, we're hooked and looking forward to the next boil (though we wouldn't mind taking a weekend off next week). We purchased a hydrometer and cup today, for our next evaporating day. We have to see this season through, so that we can get some robust flavored maple syrup.
As lady Genevieve and I have been reading "Little House in the Big Woods", we really enjoyed the chapters about the Ingall's Sugaring day. Maple Sugaring is about more than getting a bit of delicious maple syrup at the end of the day. It's about being outside and spending the whole day with people that you love- creating memories. Memories were made- and a new tradition has been born!
So far:
We've boiled: appx. 35 gallons sap
Bottled 2 quarts & 2.5 cups maple syrup
2 Saturdays of boiling- 10.5 hours
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| Pancakes with homemade whipped cream, strawberries, maple sugar & today's batch of maple syrup! |
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| Light Amber "fancy" grade w/ sugar sand settled on bottom (last week's batch) Medium Amber (this week's batch) Dark Robust (Wegmans syrup) |
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