We're Cooking Now!

Today we got the maple evaporator, buckets and tanks cleaned and ready to go.  Then we gathered about 50 gallons of sap.  This will only make a little over a gallon of finished syrup - perhaps 11 or 12 finished pints - but this was all we could handle today.  The snow is still deep, and now it has become like granulated slush, very difficult to walk in.   We just about wore ourselves out gathering the 50 gallons.   Every year Harold and I tell ourselves "we're getting too old for this".  But next year we do it again.   This is the first big exercise after getting too soft all winter long.   And exercise this is!  Hauling heavy sap pails through the deep slush without spilling anything or falling is a challenge.   With the deep snow cover we have no idea what we are stepping on in the woods, and hidden stumps and logs could be everywhere to trip us up!  I did fall once...........but fortunately my buckets were empty. 
     The sap will not be running for a couple days now, as the weather will be too warm.   But starting next Tuesday or Wednesday it will be running full tilt again.   Before then, we hope to tap more trees.
     Even the yard is a muddy mess.   The temps got up to 50 degrees today and water was running like rivers everywhere in the yard.  Even my greenhouse has a couple inches of water in it along one side.   A person has to wear boots at all times and hope you don't slip on the muddy lawn.   Ah......the joys of mud season!

Harold waves to the camera from the maple camp.   Notice the steam coming off the sap evaporator - we are really boiling away sap!  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of finished syrup, so there is lots of boiling to do.   We feed the fire with wood.   This year Harold is using slab wood that he got for free from an Amish sawmill.   I would have gotten closer to the area for a nicer photo, but I didn't feel like fighting the muddy yard!  This is about 300 feet from the house and it was all my zoom lens could handle.

As we were walking through the paths in the woods, we saw that the deer had really bitten off lots of small saplings  It was a tough winter for them, too.   There were piles of deer droppings everywhere, more than I have ever seen.   Just about every small tree had branches nipped off.  Fortunately young trees can survive this and keep growing.  There will be maple trees for future generations.   I always wonder if today's young folks will continue this time honored tradition of making maple syrup?  So far, no young folks seem to be interested in learning this.  Such a shame.  Our neighbor is boiling away sap today, too.   And so far no younger folks have expressed any interest in learning from him either.     Will future generations just eat the chemical based corn syrup stuff?   I sure hope not!  There is nothing better than pure maple syrup on pancakes and waffles! (A close second is wild chokecherry syrup, and that is an art to make, too!)