Syrup Season Once Again!

Apples is such a pretty girl.  The muddy weather gives her a whole new look.

February is more than half over.  Late February means Maple Syrup Season gets under way.  And it is definitely under way here now.  Our last two years were very poor.  Last year it got very warm very early and I think 2017 was similar.  We need nights below freezing and days above freezing to make the sap run.  I don't know how 2019 is going to shake out, but it is off to a big start.

Sam put out 38 taps while I was at  the agility trial on the 9th.  Some trees he puts 2 taps in, and many just one.  He runs tubing from the taps to holes in the lids of 3+ gallon buckets.  There are many ways to tap trees and gather the sap, but this works for us.  

The conditions were not right for the sap to run until Tuesday, when it rained pretty much all day and was around 50 degrees.  Wednesday afternoon I went up to the maple grove and discovered full buckets under every tree!  I collected 21 buckets and hauled most of them to the sugar shack.  In a nutshell, we started the evaporator early Thursday and ran it Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  We gathered another 22 buckets of sap on Friday, 6 more on Saturday and only 4 on Sunday. This wonderful sap run yielded 3 gallons of finished syrup.
 
Once the sap is gathered, it goes into the sugar shack, which is where our wood-fired evaporator is.  We stack the buckets and load them one at a time into a warming pan on the top of the syrup pan.

To the right, the syrup pan is full of fresh sap that has not yet been brought to a boil.  It looks and tastes like water at this point.  Once we bring the sap to a boil, we will add wood to the fire about every 15 minutes.  All  Day   Long.  We use pine because we have a big supply of it and it burns hot.  It is split fairly small and stacked outside the sugar shack.

We  slowly add fresh sap to the pan as the water in it boils away.  We put 14 buckets into the pan on Thursday and it took pretty much all day to accomplish that.  There is an opening in the roof of the sugar shack to allow all those gallons of water to escape in the form of steam.  And there are great huge clouds of it.  When you consider we boiled approximately 150 gallons of water away to end up with 3 gallons of syrup, it kind of boggles the mind.

Our sugar shack is a mile from our house.  Uphill most of the way and the road is a sea of mud this time of year.  So one of us stays at the sugar shack  to keep the pan full and the fire going.  We read, do Sudoku puzzles, games on our tablets, etc.  We have no electricity up there, but we have a comfy van-seat couch and there is always something to do.  Yesterday I cleared a lot of brush and briars on one side of the pond and piled them up to burn.  Grover is always with me, as Rowdy used to be (and still would be if he was able to go). If it is warm enough I have been known to sit in the sun and knit and listen to an audio book.  Oh, there is also an outhouse.  All the comforts of home.

The season can run until mid-March and we hope we get a few more good runs so we will have syrup to sell.  I already have a gallon of syrup in jars set aside for our use and some for my boys.  When we decide we aren't likely to get enough sap to run the evaporator again, we will pull the taps and clean everything and put it away for next year.  

I have been keeping a paper Syrup Season Journal since 2013.  it is fun to go back and look at daily temps and weather and see if we were getting sap runs and how much and how long we cooked and what the yield was.  

We had some more snow early this month.  We got about a 6" snowfall maybe the first weekend of the month and Sam was able to use his new tractor to clear the driveway.  he has also been using it to load round bales on his trailer and deliver them to his dad for his cattle.  I think he is happy with the tractor.  

Grover and I attended an agility trial in Zanesville on the 9th and 10th.  We had 6 runs and Qd in 4, earning 2 more Double Qs toward MACH 2.  That brings us to 15.  We only have a third of the points we need however.  We will trial in Zanesville again March 9th and 10th and then head to Tulsa, OK for AKC Nationals.  I am very excited about that.
One of the people I am going with said last time she went everyone decorated their stalls with banners, so I had a banner made.  It is 2' X 2' and is vinyl with grommets for hanging.   I will go this week and order similar ones for the other 3 people with whom I am sharing a stall.  These will be fun to display and will make nice souvenirs for us.

But before all that, my mom and I are heading out to Portland in just a few days to visit my son, Ian, and his family.  My little grandson will be almost 10 months old.  He looks like he will be walking any day now.  Mom has not seen him since June so I know she is looking forward to the trip.  Ian was her first grandchild, so he is special to her as well.  Like all her grandchildren.  

I did finish my other thrummed mitten, and I started a hooded vest, and have a warp on the big loom for a custom order rug, but when it is really cold, I don't spend much time in my studio and I have been busy doing other things as well.  

Spring is just around the corner!  But meanwhile, here are 2 snow-loving dogs: