Maple Syruping

My husband is a hunter-gatherer.  I'm amazed at him and the way his hobbies bring our family all kinds of yummy things.  We enjoy venison, grouse, wild rice, fish, and wild berries.  Now, we can add maple syrup to the list!  This year was the first year that we tapped about 12 trees around our house.  Here's how it went:

 First, my man whittled taps out of sumac.  Then, he drilled at least one hole in each tree -- a few trees had multiple holes -- and pounded in the taps.  Then he wired fancy milk jugs to the taps.  And then we waited.

 In case you haven't noticed, spring has been slow to come this year.  We are told that the maple sap ran later and slower (and then longer) than usual.  Eventually, though, our jugs filled with sap.  Great sapping weather is warm and sunny during the day and freezing or below at night.  The kids loved checking the jugs and then collecting sap with daddy.

 

When the jugs started getting full, we would go around and empty the clear sap into a five-gallon bucket.  The sap tastes like slightly sweet water...and looks just like water, too!

 

 We (by we I mean Shandy) tried several different methods for boiling the sap during this, our experimental season.  By the end, he had constructed this:

 

He would pour the clear sap into the pail with a spigot that let it slowly drip into the boiling pot.  It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, so the boiling is the longest part of the process.  He'd boil it down this way for several hours.

Then he'd bring it in the house and slowly boil it down in a smaller pan or pot.  There are a few ways to tell when the syrup is done.  Once the sugar reaches an ideal percentage, the rolling boil becomes a foaming boil.  It's also supposed to "apron" off a dipped spoon.  In the end, we went by the temperature, which needs to be 219 degrees.  

And after that, we poured it into jars!

 This was our first jar, and we got about 2 gallons all together before we pulled the taps.  With our long spring, though, we probably could have gotten another gallon or two.  We were surprised at how delicious it is, since neither of us were huge fans of the homemade maple syrup we've had in the past.  In fact, we let the kids try it on their pancakes first, waiting for their disappointed reactions.  Instead, they loved it!  So then we put it on our pancakes and we loved it too!  Maybe it's because it's our own, maybe our palates are more refined (ha!), or maybe it just is that good.  At any rate, we welcome guests any time for pancakes and maple syrup :).