Maple Syrup - When to tap in this weird weather??

alan40 · Feb 10, 2006

Looks like two more weeks of good cold weather. Just what we needed. I know what you mean about dark syrup. I gave away most of my fancy and kept the dark. Boy is it good to cook with.
Hope to break the 25 gallon mark this year. Just took breakfast to work for the crew and they went through a quart.
Also invited them up to the sugarhouse for a hands on tour. Love to have people come up and find out what go's into making maple. A couple times firing the evaporator and they have a nice glow to there face!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif Of course I offer free food,drink, maple samples and tractor rides through the woodlot with frequent stops to stretch there legs. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Have a great day! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

scott_vt · Feb 11, 2006

[Of course I offer free food,drink, maple samples and tractor rides through the woodlot with frequent stops to stretch there legs. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Have a great day! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif ] )</font>

Gee Al,
If you you wernt so far away I would take you up on that offer /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif But if I got all that I guess I would be haulin buckets /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

scotty

JimR · Feb 11, 2006

rox, I can tell you it is a lot of work if you are just a little guy doing your own. We use to put in between 40-60 taps. That would give us enough to do one boil down each morning when I got home from work back then. 40 quarts will give you one quart of syrup. When the sap was running really good I could boil off another batch after the first. We use to get between 20-30 quarts a season. That is very small time for sure. It was just my father in law and I doing all the work. But it was enough to keep both families supplied for quite a while. Now most of our best trees are dying due to salt on the roads. We had two removed this past year. I could hang 4 buckets on these trees at once they were so big. It's a shame to see them all dying along the roadsides. I've been letting the small sugar maple trees grow in the woods for future sap collecting if I ever get back into it.

rox · Feb 11, 2006

Jimr,
are you sure that it is the salt ont he roads that is killing the trees? I never heard of that before. When I lived in Wisconsin, we used a lot of salt and I don't recall that it killed the trees.

JimR · Feb 11, 2006

rox, All of my maples along the road are suffering a slow death. The town tree warden told me it was the road salt killing them. thirty feet in the woods the trees are fine. It is just along the roadsides.

tat2z1969 · Feb 12, 2006

( rox, All of my maples along the road are suffering a slow death. The town tree warden told me it was the road salt killing them. thirty feet in the woods the trees are fine. It is just along the roadsides.

Its the chemical mix in the salt that kills them(calcium cloride I think), most places don't admit they use a mix.You can tell if the deer are licking the shoulder of the road and they look small in size or their racks are small and twisted a lot,just don't look right. Game commision made our township stop using it.
We tap about 300 trees each year,last year was great and hope this year is also, have everything set up and just waiting for the water to flow.

DrRod · Feb 13, 2006

I used to go out with my grandparents to tap a few trees and I've always considered it a privleged part of my upbringing -- not many kids can say they've done it. And I loved putting it on fresh snow or even mixing a little milk in to make maple snowcreme.

Ben Franklin put forth a plan to eliminate sugar imports by using maple syrup exclusively. Its interesting to ponder how American cuisine might have evolved had they adopted his plan. Think of all the things that have sugar in them and then consider how they would taste with maple sugar instead. Hard to picture maple in your coffee or maple whiskey.