I’m like a little kid just before Christmas! I love making Maple Syrup! For now we are in a waiting period. We finished tapping last week – except about 40 trees right around the sugarhouse – I’m hoping I can convince someone to help me make a video on how we tap and how the lines are connected and run to the sugarhouse.
It’s not a what are we waiting for – It’s who are we waiting for? Mother Nature that’s who- we need temperatures to rise above 32* F. Why? The sap in the maple trees is frozen at this point – we need to have above freezing temps to allow the sap to flow from the trees to the spout and through our sap lines. Ideally the temps will rise above 32* during the day and drop back below freezing at night for several weeks. We call this a sap run – depending on the year we take 5-8 weeks to make our syrup for the year. How long will it take this year? Ask me in April!
So I’m excited / nervous for the season to begin – I’m doing the boiling this year. Boiling what’s that? After we collect the sap in tanks in the sugarhouse, we run it through a Reverse Osmosis (R.O.). The R.O. increases the efficiency of making maple syrup and is a huge time saver for us. The R.O. removes the water from the sap (sap is water and sugar from the Maple Tree). By removing part of the water from the sap we have a concentrated sugar water – it now requires less energy to boil away the rest of the water to produce Maple Syrup. We boil the sap in a sugaring rig – this is a giant stainless steel rectangular set of pans that sits on an arch – ( a steel frame) where we maintain a wood fired flame to boil the sap in the pans.
So what’s different this year – I get to be head chef – I’ve been around the process my entire life and have done all of the tasks but this year the responsibility rests on my shoulders. I’ve looked forward to this my entire life and I want to make sure I do a good job. This is a family business and I will feel like I have my Grandfather and Great grandfather watching me – my Dad better be there beside me guiding me! If I don’t make Maple Syrup good enough to put on my table – then I won’t put it on yours!
