Maple Love

This was the first year that our maple operation was 100% my own. After a bit of trouble to get a working drill, the kids and I tapped three trees on March 10th, which is about one month later than what  was typical for us due to freezing temperatures (ie: the coldest February in 80 years).

For some reason two of the three trees were having yellow sap from the get-go. In years past these particular trees were usually our super-producers. This made no sense to me, since it was no where near warm enough for them to start blooming (the usual reason for yellow sap) but after a few days of the same – just some small yellow drips – I pulled the taps out. Now I just had one tree left.

On March 17th I boiled my first batch of sap on the kitchen stove.

In total I had 5 small batches of sap to boil during my short five-week sugaring season. The batches are shown (from left to right) first to last.

Batch 1 was beautifully clear sap but I made a rookie mistake and boiled it for too long making it more like candy. It's already starting to crystallize.

Batch 2 was yellow sap. I'm not sure why it happened maybe because it froze and then thawed while in the bucket thanks to temperature swings. I was almost going to throw it out but my husband suggested I try it. He even tasted it and said he liked it so here it is, super dark. At least I didn't over boil it so it's more like syrup instead of honey.

Batch 3 was a mix of some slightly yellow sap with a second run of clearer sap. It turned into a medium syrup but it was a very small amount.

Batch 4 was crystal-clear sap and boiled to a good consistency, however there is a ton of sandy sediment at the bottom that I should strain out.

Batch 5, the last one, was also beautifully clear sap but the smallest amount yet. I boiled it to a good consistency and the color is amazingly light, just like Batch 4, but batch five has less sediment at the bottom. Perhaps that is only because it hasn't been sitting in the fridge as long.

I pulled the tree tap yesterday because even the nighttime temperatures were supposed to be above freezing. That is not sugaring weather. 

 Yet the next morning I, along with the rest of Northwestern VT, woke up to this:

Maybe sugaring season is not quite over, but I am over sugaring season.

Our Worst Maple Season Yet

We have been doing our own home-sugaring operation for 4 years now.  Easter Sunday, April 20th, we stopped our maple sugaring operation for the year. What a strange year it's been for sugaring. This may just be our worst maple sugaring year yet.

Normally we put in our maple taps into our 6 maple trees in mid-February. The sap flows well with nighttime temperatures below freezing and daytime temperatures above freezing. Typically by early April we start to see warmer days (plus getting tired of boiling) and wrap up by the first week or so of the month.

This year we put in our taps by mid-February as usual. We had one good run and got a really good first batch of maple syrup. Then came another polar vortex which froze the sap in the buckets and sent the trees back into hibernation.

In March we had a couple decent days for sap runs, but we had a few batches that turned out dark and tasted really bad. We're not sure exactly why. Perhaps it was a storage issue, perhaps freezing and thawing sap while they still hung on the trees was enough to doom the batch, or maybe it was a problem with our low-tech boiling method. Regardless, we haven't made much good syrup this year.

Today the sap in the buckets looked cloudy so Dada of Ma'at dumped them out and pulled the taps out of the trees. The season is over, and it wasn't a particularly good one thanks to weird weather. Thankfully we have some syrup leftover from last years amazing production year.

It's not just a bummer for my family's little operation. Hits to the maple production due to weird weather and climate change hurts Vermont's economy. Just this year, Peter Welch (who participates in VT's Safe Climate Caucus) acknowledged that climate change is creating uncertainty for Vermont's maple producers. "The longer we wait to address it, the more difficult it will be to reverse course." Watch the video below to hear his message on climate change and maple production.

 

Boiling on a Beautiful Day

This past weekend was gorgeous. With sunny skies and temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s the maple sap was flowing. On Saturday my husband chopped wood so that we could start boiling. The wood came from a dead maple tree on his father's land, so it was free. We have a very low budget, low tech maple sap boiling system so we are always looking for dead wood to harvest. He also built a fun snow tunnel with Big Bro.

On Sunday we gathered the sap and brought it to the barn. Using my Girl Scout fire-building skills, I started a fire in the old wood stove that we got for cheap at an estate sale a few years ago.

Everyone wanted to help build the fire, even Lil Sis.

It was almost a one-match fire, but it's been a whole year since I built a fire so it ended up actually taking two matches.

Then it was time to filter the sap to get out any dirt and bark that may have fallen into it.

Since we have a very low tech system, and a wood stove that is designed to throw heat around a room rather than just concentrate it on the pot, it took a while to get the almost 20 quarts of sap to boil. Keeping the boil is hard too because we have to frequently feed the fire. Feeding it often enough wasn't possible since since I had a Citizens Climate Lobby meeting in the afternoon so my husband was on his own with the kids and the fire.

At our slow evaporation speed it took a few hours to get down to the level shown in the above picture. But before we went to bed that night it was done. Our first batch of 2014. 

Those 20 quarts of sap in the pot yielded just half a quart of actual maple syrup. Needless to say, we do this for our own fun and enjoyment, not for profit. But the rewards are sweet!

Little Maple Sugarers

We are in the midst of a good stretch of weather for collecting maple sap. This past weekend I told my husband the 10 day forecast, so he got the sap buckets, lids, and taps out of the basement. 

This year the kids are old enough to help him wash them out with soap. Not surprisingly, my husband did the bulk of the washing and the kids decided to play peekaboo with the shower curtain.

Over the weekend it was too cold for the sap to run, and we were still sick (never ending nasty cold!) so we never got around to hanging any buckets. But on Wednesday night my husband came home a little bit early. With the last light of dusk, he and the kids went out to hang the buckets on our sugar maple trees.

They had to drill the holes in the tree by flashlight. The kids had a blast helping their dad.  Pepper liked being outside with the family too. I was inside cooking dinner.

We should have about four days of good weather (warm days, cold nights) where the sap is running well. I will keep checking the weather report for when the next good stretch will be. Hopefully we will get a good yield this season.