Category: maple syrup

We are ramping up again for our second season of Maple sugaring. With perfect weather ahead:

And based on a UVM study, I tend to prefer tapping early even with the chance of cold snaps as Winter & Spring figure out who the new boss is. Essentially from what I gather, you can’t tap too early but you can tap too late. I also really like the taste of early flow and the season is spread out in more manageable chunks of labor.

This sled is proving to be invaluable

The wife & kid are traveling but the neighbors are here to help

Cleaning the tanks and buckets takes a long while, it’s amazing we did it last year without a well for water.

It takes a lot of work to get everything ready, we will apply a lot of lessons learned last year. I uncovered the evaporator and didn’t even have to kick out a raccoon.

We fired our 2’x3′ Mason evaporator for our first boil ever. We boiled ~80 gallons in 12 hours. We’ve learned lots of lessons and will have to make several improvements to our current setup. It’s still very cool that we are now able to produce more than enough maple syrup to cover our family’s yearly consumption.

The smell is great

Boiling well into the night

We still need to finish the syrup on our cookstove, filter it, and can it.

We are getting ready for this coming season of Maple Sugaring. Nicole will be doing the bulk of the work. I’m in charge of getting the ducks in a row so we can hit the ground running when the sap starts flowing.

To this effect, we purchased an evaporator and 40 buckets & spouts. This should give us 10 to 15 gallons of syrup but the season could be weird given the “winter” we’re in now.

The model we have is a Mason Welding 2’x3′ Hobby Evaporator. It’s supposed to evaporate at ~8 gallons per hour.

Not my picture, ours is currently wrapped up.

I need to brick it and get a chimney for it.