Maple Syrup Season 2017 begins!

Up here in the northwoods of Minnesota, maple syrup time has arrived!  Yesterday and today we tapped about 100 trees, and will probably tap another batch of trees tomorrow afternoon.   Making maple syrup is a big deal up here.   Many folks in the area boil up sap from their backyard trees, and everyone has their own ways of doing things.   For weeks before the sap runs, neighbors are talking about what to do different this year, how to improve the process, and arguing about the "best way" to do everything.   We have all spent time in the winter preparing sap bags and cleaning equipment and gathering canning jars.  Now the time is here..............
     Maple syrupping takes a physical toll on a person.   It's a lot of work!  Every year Harold and I say things like:  "We're getting too old for this."  Or "This will probably be the last year we do this".  Or "Boy, are we out of shape!"  But then, next year we forget about all this and do it again!  We know we are in for a couple of busy weeks of hauling sap, boiling sap, cutting wood, feeding the fire under the evaporator, filtering syrup, heating it, testing it, tasting it until we are sick of it, and finally bottling the finished product.   Folks visit each other and present a jar of this year's finished product, and everyone takes turns shaking the jar a couple of quick sideways shakes to see "if there are 3 bubbles in the syrup" - a good indication of a fine syrup made the right way and with the right thickness.   And of course we all have to taste each other's finished syrup and compare!
    Vermont has nothing on us up here in northern Minnesota!  We, too, can make a very tasty and fine maple syrup.   Making our own maple syrup means we can always have plenty to cook with and plenty for the year without spending an arm and a leg for it.   AND it comes right from our very own woods and we are proud that we made it ourselves!   Just buying a bottle of it at the store doesn't give you the same sense of satisfaction.   So, in spite of the work involved, here we go again!

We start by drilling a hole in a maple tree using a 13/64 drill bit.   Harold used to use a hand driller for this process, but a DeWalt drill is much easier for old folks like us!

The finished hole begins to ooze sap immediately.

A stainless steel tap is pounded into the drilled hole.

A sap bag is hung through the tap and a 3 inch hex head screw is driven into the tree just above the tap and bag to hold the bag in place securely through a grommet.

At this time of year, the path through the sugarbush is quite muddy and wet with puddles of water everywhere.   At least we aren't slogging through 2 feet of snow like we did about 7 or 8 years ago!

You can see 4 bags hung in this photo.   We tap trees on both sides of paths through our woods to make it easier to collect and easier to haul.

Our farm cats always tag along with us!  They think it's great fun to follow us in the woods and explore new areas - so many trees to climb!  So many logs to explore!  So many new scents to enjoy!  We had 10 of them follow us around this afternoon.

One of our tomcats, Smokey, watches Harold and inspects every newly tapped tree!  He has to know everything that goes on!

Here is one of the bags on a tree we tapped yesterday.   It already has about 2 gallons of sap collected in the bag.

We spent time this afternoon scrubbing out the bulk tank that we use to store the collected sap.   After cleaning the inside spotless, we tarped the tank to keep it clean.

We have a start on wood needed for the evaporator, but we will need a LOT more than this!   In between boiling sap, Harold will be cutting more wood and splitting it for the stove.

So this is what we need to do just to get started!  Tomorrow we will collect sap from the 100 bags, and on Monday we will get up early and boil sap all day long and feed the fire.   By evening, we should have "near syrup", which will be finished in the house to 218 degrees and filtered through a wool filter, and then allowed to sit overnight to settle out some more before canning it up the next day.    This process will be repeated over and over for probably the next couple weeks.    That is, IF it freezes at night and is above freezing during the day.    If the night time temperatures don't go to freezing, the sap will not run the next day, and we get a break from the process.   We collect sap until we either get tired of doing this, or until the trees bud out, whichever comes first!  (Usually we've had enough of this after about 10 days!)  We make anywhere from 10-20 finished gallons of syrup, and it takes about 40 gallons of sap (sometimes a lot more, varies from year to year) to make one gallon of finished syrup.