Adventures in Maple Syruping

My oldest daughter, who doesn't live at home, rightly said the above video was like Maple Zen...when I sent it to her. 

We tapped about 10 trees this year with new supplies we purchased from Tap My Trees (great resource for those of you who are looking to try this!) We did this on a very, very small scale years ago and couldn't wait to do it the right way! 

 

We had a few warm days and boy did it make the sap flow! We got over 20 gallons our very first day! The pups were very good helpers :) 

 It took me awhile to get the right set up. We have a really wonderful fire pit but boiling takes an insane amount of time... insane. To give you some perspective, the 20 gallons took almost 12 hours to boil down to 3 jars of syrup! 

 I invested in a candy thermometer to know when the syrup was ready and finished indoors. When it reached about 219 degrees, you usually have syrup. 

Aren't the little jars we got adorable? We are all excited to try to sell our syrup (and veggies, eggs and honey maybe one day?)

I also recommend these two very helpful books for those of you who want to give this a try. We are pretty hooked and looking into expanding and getting an evaporator and equipment one day. No matter if you want to do it once, as a backyard hobby or to make a small profit (to pay off the hobby!) both of these books are super helpful. 

What do you think about the name Maple Zen Farm for our backyard homestead? So sweet.

Logo 1 or 2? (my daughters want to know!) 

All in a day's work ... literally.

We finally did it!  We gathered enough sap from the four maples we tapped in our backyard to boil it into syrup.  This was a perfect activity for the first day of spring to share with the girls!  

As you can see from the first photo above, we had a decent amount of sap.  Two of the white buckets were almost full, one was about half full and the blue container had about 1/4 sap in it.  We boiled and boiled and boiled.  For the ENTIRE DAY.  Approximately 8 hours to be exact and this is what we got:

 Yep.  That's it!  All of that sap for not even a half of a jar of syrup!  But, OMG it was the most absolute delicious syrup we have ever tasted and the girls were amazed that they were able to make their own from trees in their backyard.  Fresh, unprocessed and pure.  

Of course, we had pancakes the very next morning.  Our syrup got firm in the refrigerator so I'm thinking I likely cooked it just a bit too much.  At the very end of the process, it can go from the right temp to cooking too much pretty quickly.  I think I learned this time around and hopefully will do better next time.  In either case, we were able to warm up the syrup and it was fine.  

Definitely hooked on the process!  

Backyard Maple Syruping

There are many really awesome things about living in New England and Maple Syruping is definitely one of them.  We have an abundance of maples in Connecticut and it is something I've wanted to do for a really long time.  This past Saturday we attended a class on Backyard Maple Syruping at a farm we are members of.  The class was very informational and really gave us all of the basics on what we needed to get started.   

 With the weather warming up in the 40's this week, it is a perfect time to give it a try.  We went home and started simple with inexpensive buckets and lids and spouts that were gifted to us by a maple syrup farm nearby.  

 The biggest challenge for us is definitely identifying maples in the winter.  While the bark can be easy to spot in a mature tree, younger trees look different and I found it quite confusing.  The teacher at our class taught us that maples are one of the few trees that have adjacent branches which really helps but when trees are VERY tall, it is hard to see for sure.  

 I think we did ok.  If not, we will be making Oak and Birch syrup I guess.  :)  My spouts are leaking a bit so I am going to hammer them in more but we are finally getting some syrup.  It is slow but steady.  

Tomorrow is supposed to rain so I'm a little anxious about what to do.  I used tubing and secured the lids but I'm not convinced the rain won't get into our makeshift supplies.  I may either try to cover any openings with tape or even bag around the bucket.  

Do any of you do this in your own backyards?  Stay tuned to see if it works out for us!  

xoxo