Category: maple syrup

Very tough sugaring so far, the weather isn’t cooperating. The conditions on the ground are horrible with ice and melting snow, you never know what will happen on the next step you take. Then you need to handle utensils in these conditions, next to a raging evaporator, glasses covered with steam, at night, by yourself. The potential is real for a freak accident that involves boiling, burning, impalement and maple syrup. We also had a wind storm which blew everything away but the cover on the evaporator thank god; a building around the evaporator will be very nice.

Some trees produce profusely

The sap wagon

Got stuck… had to shovel snow out from underneath the sap wagon

boiling away

Hello fogginess my old friend

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

The reward: 1.5 gallons of unadulterated maple sweetness

I got about 30 gallons of sap, handling  full time work and a homestead can be challenging, I finished at dusk. It is a great chore to end the day with, I just wish I could do things at a more leisurely pace.

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.