Boiling Sap
It’s been several weeks since I had a day to myself, and it’s a lovely Monday here. It’s our turn to drive to school this week, so I’m doing that, and in between I have six and a half hours of doing whatever I want. My husband left before six so he can get back by evening, the laundry is piled and I had thirty-two gallons of sap by yesterday afternoon and the sun is shining and I bought groceries alone (potatoes beets cabbage celery peas spinach milk carrots OJ concentrate Brussels sprouts etc). Why, I could know I shopped alone by looking at the groceries!
I treated myself to a some new tools: clothes pins, a candy thermometer, and a fencing pliers. I have a thing about tools.
Oh, was I going to describe maple-making. Of course.
A friend gave us a container of old maple spiles a few years ago, and the children have tried making syrup sometimes, but they were pretty young to be successful alone and I had no time. This year I felt able to make an effort, and it’s been rather fun.
One of the children took a cordless impact from the shop for me, and we found the ¾ inch bit we bought last year, and I went out with four helpers (6-9yo) to put in some taps. We looked for wet streaks or growth lines in the bark and drilled about two inches deep. We pounded the spiles in with a little hammer and hung random containers from the little hooks. Milk jugs, we have learned, do not repurpose well as sap buckets. The steel coffee cans are much more affective.
We have 15-18 taps out, and that’s plenty for the boiling capacity we have.
I started by building a fire under an old five gallon canner, but that was too slow. By now we’re using that, plus a two inch deep baking sheet (Costco size, maybe 13×18”) on an old stove.
The best boil we’ve done was eighteen gallons of sap, which made nine cups of syrup. The boys kept the fire going all day. If nothing else, we are learning the value of syrup.
The syrup is done when it reaches the temperature of boiling water plus seven degrees. (Boiling water temp changes with barometric pressure— I didn’t know.) I want to make sugar one of these times. I’ll let you know if it works or not.