Maple syruping questions

[Skidooman]

The neighbours haul from Saturday.

[TX fanatic]

My wife and daughter collected on Sunday, They brought @ 45 gallons. We thought that was alot   :) :)     Man does the real deal taste great on anything you put it on 


TX

[sparcat]

I'm going to date myself a bit, but use to help out every year with a larger operation.  When I first started, we used buckets, using snoshoes, and gathered in a big tank on a sleigh, with 2 horses pulling the sleigh. It was alot of work.  The sugarhouse was big with a wood fired boiler. the sleigh tanks were brought up on a high mound of dirt, to gravity feed it to gathering tanks inside the sugarhouse, and that was also gravity fed into the boiler!!

Things progressed to using a log skidder to plow the lanes and use a tractor and wagon, but still manually emptying the buckets.  i think we had 2500-3000 taps back then.  Use to also help fill the containers to be sold, just to warm up sometimes in the sugar house.

The same operation has bought out other smaller maple sugar groves, and now uses tubing to big holding tanks near the road, uses a sump pump to fill the holding tanks into a truck or wagon, and brought into a new sugarhouse, that is state of the art, with an osmosis filtering machine to remove water before it gets to the boiler.  Great family work in Upstate N.Y.

By the way, there are several grades, and colors of maple syrup, with grade A light amber, being the one everyone wants. The later the season, the darker the syrup made!!

[trusty johnson]

 We also are still on the bucket method.
 Collected today, 1500 gal., that is with 1200 pails hanging.
 4 adults and 1 nine year old, have to give him credit, he worked pretty hard.
 He is just like his dad.
 The syrup is still at a beautiful color and oh so sweet.

[trusty johnson]

I've been collecting for several years for the same guy.  It's located along the St. Croix River, just south of Taylors Falls, MN.  We went out yesterday morning in the "new" sloppy snow to collect.  The guy we collect for has been at this since the late 1940s.  They skipped collecting for a couple years while his partner was in the service during the Korean War.  They bought a new cooker in 1971 for $7000.  Now, just the finish pan costs about $5000.  The shack is pretty cool and has a lot of history.  Every day that they cook syrup, they write on the wall how many gallons of sap has been collected and how many gallons of syrup they ended up with.  This year, we have 1265 pails out, collected 1625 gallons yesterday, which cooked down to 75 gallons of syrup.  We bottle syrup for ourselves, but he sells most of the syrup in bulk.  We collect the sap from the trees into the "sap wagon".  The wagon holds about 250 gallons of sap.  From the sap wagon, it goes into the tanks outside the little shed, ending up in the holding tanks inside, which hold 250 gallons each; then on to the cooker.  It was too steamy for me to get any decent pictures of the sap actually cooking, but you can see the end filtering process, and then into the bulk containers. 

We call this "boot camp" every year...kind of gets you back into shape after a whole winter.....

[AMG]

I have not sapped for a few years back at the in-laws Farm...... our last batch was over 2,500 gallons.  Mother nature changes the sugar content in the sap.  Some years you get more per gallon than others..... One year, we got 1 gallon per 25 gallons of sap.   Other years, 35 gallons per 1 gallon boiled down.  We have the professional stainless Steel cooker, wood fired on the Farm for this.  There is nothing like putting your face over the boiling sap in the tank and inhaling as much as you can!!  There is nothing like it!!  Awesome!... then when it is coming off of the last distilation tank.... !!!   Then take a branch and dip it in the tank to taste it!!!!...... I wish everyone could have a chance at doing this once in their lifetime!!!  Hard work, but well worth it.

James B.
Duluth, MN   

[winterclassics]

Our family was the second biggest producer in this county here in Pa. we used to make about 2000 gals a year. we have 3 evaporators. Two are wood fired, one is natural gas.
Each Feb we would start tapping the trees that were on south faces of hills..saved the north faces till last, as they ran later and longer.
it was time to stop when the trees started to bud. That would make the sap bitter..Always hoped for freezing nights...warm days...and no south wind. Sap won't run during a south wind..

After growing up on the real stuff...I just can't stomach the fake

winterclassics