Category Archives: Maple Syrup

Maple Syrup Season 2

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I’ve been getting all of my ducks in a row these past few weeks.  Since we tapped the trees 2 weeks ago, I have been stacking wood, cleaning tools, organizing equipment…and waiting for the sap to flow.  And waiting some more.  Since that week of sunny days with above average highs, the temperatures have dropped again (and I dare say plummeted last night to -15° Celsius with a wind-chill of -25°Celcius). Needless to say I’m antsy; I want to have a boiling day!  I’ve been keeping myself occupied by  double-checking that all of our equipment is in order, and doing beekeeping research (a story for another day).  In particular we’ve been fine-tuning our sap-transportation process.  Since the RTV has mini-caterpillar tracks on it meant for getting around in the bush now, it’s inefficient to be driving it back and forth to the house to empty the 50 gallon collecting tank out.  I purchased a bigger tank (over twice the size at 125 gal) this winter that we will situate in the truck bed instead.  So we will be dumping the buckets into the RTV tank, pumping sap from the RTV tank to the one in the truck, driving the truck to the sugar shack and then pumping the sap from the truck tank to the holding tank outside the sugar shack.    We mulled over the best way to do this given the equipment that we already own and settled on purchasing an additional pump to leave in the second collecting tank for the season.  Getting the proper sized fittings and tubing and quick connects has been a trial.  At Canadian Tire and then at Home Depot we went in search for the correctly sized brass fittings – no dice.  They had male 1/2 inch converter for garden hose, and a female 3/4 inch for vinyl tubing.  Plastic and pvc but not brass.  I reined in my compulsion to pull my hair out in frustration.  The only purchase that resulted from that excursion was garden seeds for pretty flowers.  We finally accepted that the most reasonable and economical solution is to duplicate the system that we already have instead of buying additional converters to fit the extra tube that we have lying around.  Meaning, we simply need to buy more tubing with the right inner diameter.  Big sigh.

Ducks!  Attennnnntion!  And waddle!

Maple Syrup Season 2: Tapping

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Let the season begin!  This week we’re tapping our trees.  The high temperatures are going up past zero degrees Celcius for the whole week, meaning the sap will be flowing.  From now until the end of the season I’m going to be riding a high that has been building all year.  Yesterday we set out on the RTV with three friends to tromp through the snow, drilling trees, tapping in spiles and hanging buckets.  We got a chunk of the bush tapped; today AJ and I are heading out to tap some more.  Photos to appear shortly.

I’m excited to report the filter stand I ordered from the welding shop is ready to be picked up (just in the nick of time!).  It will improve our efficiency, alleviating one individual from the burden of holding the filter with 30+ lbs in it aloft for half an hour.  My arms will enjoy the respite. 🙂

 

 

 

Maple Syrup Season: Round 2

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Sugarshack Dutch Doors

Wistful thoughts of mine include hanging my shingle beside this door and selling maple syrup straight from the sugar shack.

With my second maple syrup season approaching quickly, thoughts of the sugar bush have been consuming my mind: sustainable woodlot practices, food preparation, equipment preparation…  The list goes on.  I’ve been tinkering with the idea of selling some of my maple syrup.  In designing the sugar shack we included a set of Dutch doors on one side of the entry way.  For me these doors bring to mind visions of old bakeries and other food producing kitchens where consumers could approach a kitchen and purchase food within minutes of it coming out of the oven.  I value the notion of goods going straight from producer to consumer.   Now, our operation is too remote (and muddy) to expect people to come knocking on our door looking for syrup, beyond a couple sales to friends at a pancake breakfast I plan on hosting but it’s still fun to include the Dutch doors design element into our sugar shack.  Since we are located close to Carp, selling at the Carp Farmer’s Market is the next best thing to selling straight from the sugar shack.

Here is my label design in all of it's glory.

Here is my label design in all of it’s glory.

 

For fun I designed a logo to put on my bottles.  The design is a simple drawing; pencil, very flat style.  Basic yet distinct.  I chose these elements to convey the traditional, back to basics nature of our methods; and the unique flavors of pure maple syrup.  (What’s more is unlike some commercial brands my syrup is made from 100% maple syrup and doesn’t contain a plethora of ingredients that you can’t pronounce!)  Since I’ve got the design figured out, my next step is to find some label paper that I can print on and set up a printer template.  I’m thinking that I want an arched top, however that may cut off a lot of my drawing.  Maybe I should add some more tree limbs to the top….  Back to the drawing board!!

 

Maple Butter Creation

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AJ wasn't keen on being recruited to make maple butter even before his arms hurt!

AJ wasn’t keen on being recruited to make maple butter even before his arms hurt!

Who knew making maple butter was so much work!  I really wanted to make maple butter yet I don’t own a maple butter machine, so I made up my mind I’d do it by hand.  Of course by ‘I’, I mean ‘we’ and AJ was recruited to help me.  The recipe instructed, “churn maple syrup for 12-15 minutes with a maple butter machine.  Lacking a maple butter machine, we used a wooden spoon instead, plopped down on the floor in front of the TV and took turns stirring.  We’re not nearly as efficient churners as a maple butter machine; 45 minutes later we had maple butter.  Our arms were defeated, yet I was invigorated.  I can’t say the same for AJ!

Winter Anticipation

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Winter 2015 has seen some pretty extreme weather. -40 with the wind-chill? I’ll stay inside thank you very much. I heard on the radio that this winter has seen the coldest temperatures in 114 years.  We went for a walk in the sugar bush yesterday and found that a new path branching off from the main road had been roughed out with the RTV by my Dad. We walked it while I excitedly counted maple trees. “1 tap in that tree, 2 taps in that tree….” I thought to myself as we slogged through the snow. My rough estimate is we will get 15-20 more taps from the trees down that path. Us being as horribly unoriginal as we are, none of these paths have names. We’ve come up with ‘the treeline’ to refer to the path along, you guessed it, the treeline. Or the main road we’ve called ‘the main road’. I want to name this road something more exciting than “new path”. Maybe the rabbit path… We’ll see. More on that later.

Winter Anticipation 2

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‘Tis the season! The season to get excited about spring.  Maple syrup season round 2!  In eager anticipation of this monumentous season I decided to go to Montréal to buy maple syrup equipment. Julia, why wouldn’t you just buy it from somewhere around here, you ask?  I’d done my research and found that Montréal was the cheapest place I could get a bulk order of bottles and a holding tank from.  But wait, there’s more!  Montréal is where the Dominion and Grimm headquarters is, Montréal is where the dealz are, I answer!  I picked one of the worst driving days this season to go it seems, but that’s beside the point.  I borrowed my Dad’s truck and struck out for the promised land!  There were so many tools of the trade on display at Dominion and Grimm that I was like a kid in a candy shop.  I saw the Hurricane evaporator on display that can reach temperatures of 2100 degrees Farenheit (evaporates 2.7 gallons of water per minute!), I saw hulking reverse osmosis machines.  I saw a bottling machine with 4 spouts for increased efficiency.  I saw big coils of bright green and bright blue tubing.  I was blown away by the sophistication of some of the equipment.  Clearly some of that equipment was beyond the scope of my 200 tap, traditional collection operation.  Maybe some day I’ll have a need for all that jazzy equipment but not today.  I bought 20 used buckets, spiles, and cleaning equipment that will make the back-breaking clean-up in April easier.  After packing my purchases into the back of the pickup we slowly made our way back home through the storm. Crossing the city in rush hour traffic with lots of precious cargo in a snowstorm was nerve-racking.  Next time I’ll make the trip in the summer!

Fall 2014 Recap

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November 13 – This year’s first snowfall is underway.  Beautiful day today, about -3 and sunny; the grass is still green.  Outside, with the sun beaming on my face I obliviously thought ‘for this time of year that sure is a lot of pollen floating through the air’. I then continued about my business.  It took about 10 minutes before I stopped short and put two and two together, realizing that those white clusters drifting through the air were snow clusters.

I am proud to announce my maple butter won first place at the Carp Fair!  There was plenty of competition in the syrup categories.  I scoped out what the winners syrup looked like in each category.  They were all about a shade lighter than mine so I conclude that I should have entered all of my syrups a grade lower: my extra light should have been in the light category, light in the medium category etc..  Live and learn, now I know for next year.  As I’ve got time now I’m revisiting my list of improvements to make for next year.  Two weeks ago AJ and I built a folding shelf under a window in the sugar shack.  Today we bought some hardware to attach some cement slabs to the wall in the corner so we can safely tuck the finishing unit in closer to the wall.  Mundane tasks I know, but the hope is they will make our process more efficient when the time comes.  Only 4 months to go!

Improvements

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As I’ve mentioned before this past maple syrup season held a big learning curve for us. We learned that we need to: hang ALL the buckets in one fell swoop, prepare for getting stuck in the mud, etc.. At the end of our maple syrup season this year one improvement needed that stood out was a more efficient way to filter the hot syrup. What we did this year was use two wooden poles to hang the felt filter from that someone had to hold aloft for the syrup to strain through while it was being poured from the evaporator. I don’t know how many of you have made maple syrup before but these filters are thick, and having thick maple syrup being poured through a thick felt filter takes a long time. To save someone from having to stand there using both hands to balance poles on the side of the evaporator (or above the finishing unit) I’m having a filter stand/mount made. Not nearly as complex as it sounds it is simply a metal frame with two feet and two arms that will easily hold the weight of the syrup being strained.

Patience is required using this method of filtering sap. Patience, and strong arms.

Next year we will use a more efficient method than this to filter the sap.

The two human hands freed up in place of two metal feet and arms will prove invaluable for when the pan needs to be flooded because the syrup level is getting to low, or the fire needs to be stoked because the temperature is hovering just below where it needs to be, or even for when the foam is building too high and needs to be skimmed off in order for it not to boil over (which I’ve heard can be quite the mess to clean up but luckily have not experienced yet).  Bit by bit we will amend our process.

End of Season

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Our maple syrup season has come to a close.  What a rush this season has been though!  From start to finish this season has kept me busy fulfilling some responsibility or another.  We had a busy Saturday April 12 boiling the last draw, then I made the decision Sunday April 13 to pull the taps.  When we got out to the bush my decision was confirmed by what I viewed in the first couple of buckets; just enough sap to cover the bottom of the bucket, not enough to justify another boil though.   Moreover, my decision to pull the taps Sunday instead of Monday was further validated by the steady downpour of rain Monday brought.  So I finished my final batch Monday, then tallied up our syrup production for this year.  Our total yield for 2014 is a whopping 70 Litres of syrup!

Now I have 150 each of buckets, spiles and lids to wash; the evaporator to scrub out; the finishing unit to scrub out; bottling equipment to clean; the collecting tank, the boiling instruments, the filters, the holding tank; all of this equipment needs to be cleaned before storing them for next year.

After buckets have been washed, we set them out to dry (or hand dry) before stowing them for next season

After buckets have been washed, we set them out to dry (or hand dry) before stowing them for next season

 

This year was a whirl-wind adventure and, while the learning curve was steep I’ve gleaned several important points for next season, including that if I try and drive across the field when it’s muddy after the thaw I will get stuck and need my neighbor to help push me out.  I’m excited for next year.  I have my eye set on a workshop or two in the coming months, that teach about maple syrup production to hobbyists, and forest management.  For now though, I’m content with finishing cleaning up and catching up on some well-needed rest.

Maple Syrup Season

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It has been a unique season, I’ll say that much.  An uncharacteristically cold March, followed by what seemed to me to be a rapid spike in temperatures has not boded well for the maple syrup season here in Eastern Ontario.   With the temperature warming up so quickly, the significant snowfall we have experienced this year is now melting, quickly!  Left in the snow’s wake is mud.  Tons of mud!  Enough mud to make sap collection with a motorized vehicle not possible without getting stuck in the mud.  Back to basics for us!  Armed with an 8-gallon milk jug, two collecting pails, a sled to transport everything and the will-power of true Canadians we set out to collect as much sap as our milk jug would let us.  We headed for the furthest trees first and worked our way forward from there.  Hauling everything there was more than half the battle – we dealt with steep inclines, a tippy sled and lots of sticky mud!  We filled our jug from 30 buckets… only 110 buckets to go!  Time to trek back to the house.

At the risk of losing our sap, we opted to travel a different route back, a route with less tipping hazards.  We pulled the sled across the pasture instead of in front of the treeline.  At the ridge we carefully guided the jug of sap down the path to the front field, checking the ridge-buckets along way.  They were over half full and needed emptying too.  We had to go back to the house to get the 50 gallon holding tank and UTV, not merely an 8-gallon milk jug to collect all this sap.  Off we went, across the snowy field, taking turns pulling the sled or holding the jug upright while pushing the sled.  Whose crazy ‘let’s make maple syrup’ idea was this anyways?  I sheepishly grin and avert my gaze.