Little House in the RedWoods- Maple Sugaring

Two Saturdays ago we placed 10 taps into a variety of Maple Trees on our property.  It was a warm day for February, so the perfect activity for our low key Saturday.  

Our Maple Tree hunt was neat because we really learned how to identify the Maple bark & branch patterns. 

The Laird read up a lot on Maple tree identification throughout the week, and led us on the walk.  He was wanted to learn how to identify trees by their bark and leaves for many years now, but never really got around to it.  With this new interest in Maple Sugaring, he learned more in a few weeks than in the years of wanting to learn.  In the midst of Winter, and a fresh layer of snow on the ground, it wasn't as easy as looking at the leaves to find our maples.  We would dig up leaves at the base of the tree for more confirmation, but we may have tapped an oak in the bunch.  Hopefully not.

We have a very large Maple right near our front porch which we are pretty confident is a Norway Maple.  That one we tapped mostly because of it's proximity to our house and ease of being able to watch the jug fill with sap.  Tree number 2 is a Silver Maple where lady Genevieve's swing is hung.  Then as we go into the woods we have what we think are a handful of Sugar Maples.  We are using plastic 5 gallon food grade buckets with metal spiles and 5/6" plastic tubing for our sap collection operation.  In addition to the 5 gallon buckets we have a number of 1 gallon water jugs hooked up to easy access trees.  

Sap's Risin'!

We had 2 days where the sap ran last week.  And we estimate that we collected about 10.6 gallons of sap from the 10 taps.  The Norway Maple near the house was basically bleeding sap out- as it was likely our most productive tree.  On the other hand, the tree we expected to give good amount of sap, the Silver Maple produced very minimally.  We removed one of the 3 taps in that tree and tapped another tree in the woods.  

Testing the evaporator with snow 

On tree tapping day, we also built and tested our simple cinder block evaporator.  Well the Laird built it, and the kids and I came out to watch him test it out.  It worked!

1st Sugaring Off Day- lighting the fire 

This past Saturday we collected our 10 gallons of sap and boiled it.  We started around 9:15am and finished off around 1:45pm.  The snow cover from the previous weekend had all melted away with the warm days.  It was the perfect day to make syrup.  We took turns managing the fire and scooping the niter off the top of the boiling syrup, and continuing to add more sap to the trays.  One comment we've received repeatedly when we share that we are going to try Maple Sugaring this year is: "Do you realize it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup?"  

Yes.  In fact we do know this and we still want to do it! 

Maple Sugaring is about the process.  It's an activity that marks the end of winter drawing near.  It's something that gets you outside, when the cold weather easily persuades me to stay inside by the fire.  This is a process that began with reading from the internet and books we got from the library.  Then we purchased and collected materials.  And then we got outside and hunted for maple trees- and learned a thing or two.  We placed our taps and excitedly checked them daily to see what was happening.  We became obsessed with watching the weather- the same sort of attentiveness to temperatures that you have in April when you're itching to get outside and start planting seeds in the garden.  Then we get to collect the sap and boil off the water content in our home built evaporator.  It was so relaxing to be outside by the fire; similar to the feeling you get sitting around the campfire on a camping trip.  It technically took 4 1/2 hours to boil down outside, but it didn't feel burdensome at all.  It was the most magnificent way to spend a Saturday morning.  Not a moment wasted.  We loved it so much, we're looking forward to doing it again this Saturday and inviting interested friends to join us.  

Not only do we enjoy learning this process, it's been so fun to include our children and teach them things we would have loved to learn and experience as children.  We are all learning together as a family and it's the greatest feeling ever.

Adding sap to the warming pan.
The hot pan (right) is turning amber color as the water evaporates and becomes more sugar concentrated.

We yielded a whole 2 1/2 cups of syrup.  The early syrup is very light in color and taste.  They grade it as "fancy".  In our taste test comparison to Wegman's Maple Syrup, it hardly tastes like maple at all- but it was quite delicious.  So our sugar content was about 1.5%, which is lower than we expected and hoped.  

It was a pretty good first run through of Maple Sugaring this past weekend.  We still need to refine our filtering process, as our syrup still has a bit of particulate and niter settled at the bottom.  We're looking forward to opening an invitation up to friends this coming Saturday and sharing with them the joy of Maple Sugaring and what we have learned so far.  

Our Sugaring Station

Redwoodshire Maple Syrup (Fancy grade) compared with Wegmans Maple Syrup (Grade A dark)