We're becoming self-sufficient. We have chickens! We (attempt to) garden! And now for our next stunt in home-production: make your own maple syrup! I bought spiles and got my husband on board, thinking it would be a fun little project.
A tree needs to be 12 inches in diameter before it's mature enough to be tapped. Big trees can be tapped more than once: twice if it has at least a 20" diameter, thrice after 27". You can tap any kind of Maple for sap. I learned that it's also effective and tasty to use birch and walnut trees, but one should not be fooled by poles that appear to be trunks. In Canada they call pretend syrup like Mrs. Butterworth's or Aunt Jemima's "Pole Syrup", because they say that's what you end up with when you try tapping a telephone pole.
We started with three spiles and three big old Maples in our front yard.
How to tap:
1. Drill a hole about three feet from the ground on the south side of your tree. The spot you choose to tap should be above a large root or below a branch. Choose a bit the proper size for your spiles (generally 7/16" or 5/16").
2. Clear wood shavings and insert spile. Gently push it all the way in or tap with a hammer. If the spot is tap-propriate, the sap should start to drip immediately.
3. Hang a container of some sort from the hook on the spile. Sap will flow into the container and will need to be emptied (and stored) daily.
Harvesting sap-- now, that's the easy part. If syrup production were a matter of simply drilling a hole into the deciduon of your choice and hanging a bucket, they wouldn't be selling pure syrup for fifteen bucks a pint. But it turns out sap is mostly water and it's an involved process to uncover the clandestine treasure.
The boiling down of sap is a job for the open air. There is a lot of steam involved. Imagine this: the ratio of sap to syrup is 40 to 1. That's 10 gallons of sap to one quart of syrup. That's a lot of steam. That's a lot of slaving for a measly helping of syrup.
Our first attempt at making syrup from our sap was comical. We had heard that its no walk in the park to boil down sap, but they say, "one man's difficulty is another man's pleasurable hobby" (Upstate colloquialism)(okay, I made that up). We wondered how difficult it could be to start a fire and keep it going for long enough to turn our clear watery sap to gloriously viscous amber. We are fire people. Last summer, Friday was aptly named "Fire Night". In addition to enjoying a hot, fierce glow, my boy and I, we like a challenge. Therefore, we relished the opportunity to slave over a campfire for hours on end. And that's exactly what we did --slaved over a campfire. By the time we were through, we knew we needed a more efficient method, a generous upgrade in pot size, and some advice. We no longer relished the idea of standing in smoke for a ridiculous amount of time for a ridiculously small jar of syrup (which we didn't even successfully make a heavy consistency).
Take two. Later that week, after a bit more research, the help of my mom (she paid a visit to a friend of her's who is a seasoned syruper to procure us some advice), the purchase of a large stock pot, and the gathering of enough dead wood to fill our back room, we re-entered the arena, positioned to fight and win. PTB dug out the fire pit and enclosed it with cinder blocks, balanced the grate ontop and used more cinderblocks to enclose the stockpot. In this way, we hoped to lose less heat to the open air and concentrate the majority of it on our precious sap. The result was encouraging. It took about half the time and the syrup was perfect. Deliciously, proudly, satisfyingly perfect. Thankfully, we honed our skill, because the trees keep gushing and we've heard they won't stop for a month.
The boiling down of sap is a job for the open air. There is a lot of steam involved. Imagine this: the ratio of sap to syrup is 40 to 1. That's 10 gallons of sap to one quart of syrup. That's a lot of steam. That's a lot of slaving for a measly helping of syrup.
Our first attempt at making syrup from our sap was comical. We had heard that its no walk in the park to boil down sap, but they say, "one man's difficulty is another man's pleasurable hobby" (Upstate colloquialism)(okay, I made that up). We wondered how difficult it could be to start a fire and keep it going for long enough to turn our clear watery sap to gloriously viscous amber. We are fire people. Last summer, Friday was aptly named "Fire Night". In addition to enjoying a hot, fierce glow, my boy and I, we like a challenge. Therefore, we relished the opportunity to slave over a campfire for hours on end. And that's exactly what we did --slaved over a campfire. By the time we were through, we knew we needed a more efficient method, a generous upgrade in pot size, and some advice. We no longer relished the idea of standing in smoke for a ridiculous amount of time for a ridiculously small jar of syrup (which we didn't even successfully make a heavy consistency).
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