I read this last night. I know sugaring is good for you as an activity (except the ticks and hurting your body if you do too much.) I know it tastes good. It would be great to find out that eating it was beneficial. Medicinal.The season is over for me and the kids. We leave today, before the clean-up and even before the last boil.
It has been a warm year. We have made lovely syrup. We have made much less of it then we have in the past for the same number of taps. Looking at the weather patterns from last year to this we see an average mean temperature of about 10 degrees between March 1st and March 28th. It just didn't get cold enough and then it got too warm. Did I say, we made some great syrup? We just didn't make a lot of it. It was a great year to be a little further north. It was a better year for folks on vacuum systems. It was also a great year to get everything bottled up early. We put away some for Christmas barn sales, but most everything else is going into pints. Here is a short stop motion video from the sugarhouse in early March.
We are still collecting sap today. I was the non believer, I thought it was all over. The sugar content is some of the lowest we have collected and boiled, 1.5 was the reading off one batch, but it still turns into syrup with heat and time. In fact, tonight, the syrup was coming off looking like grade A, not even the B we thought we would be making. Don't worry, if you are a B fan like so many, there will be plenty.
Sol's science experiment and data.
Tap a 7 different leafy trees to test for sap and sugar content.
Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Silver Maple, Black Cherry, Hickory, Black
Birch, Black Walnut. The trees were tapped on Thursday March 12th and the sap was collected
one week later on Thursday March 19.
Sol's chart:
Tree types , Cups of sap collected, Sugar %, Amt of syrup it would produce in cups
Sugar Maple, 176, 2.2, 4.5
Red Maple, 74, 2.2, 1.9
Silver Maple, 112, 2.3, 3.0
Black Cherry, .5, .4 , .002
Hickory, 5DROPS, 98.0, N.A.
Black Birch, 0, N.A., N.A.
Black Walnut, 8, 1.9, .2
Can we make more syrup today? Last night it was below freezing. Two days ago Sylvan spent the whole morning gallivanting about the yard in his underwear. I love this about sugaring, getting up close and in the face of the season change. Watching as new life emerges from the thaw, like ticks. Dylan was out on the Other Side of the Deep Woods and said they were plentiful, he put his head down at knee height and said you could see them on every branch along the deer trails waiting for a passerby to cling to. We need to allow the coyotes and mountain lions back in to eat the white footed mice that carry the lime disease. We need some wild creatures to thin the deer populations that carry the little beasts. We need healthy populations of wild birds that want to gobble the little creatures down.
I digress, our business at hand is making syrup, and today we may make more, it may be grade B, but that is the most requested variety we have so...
Next post will be on Sols' tree tapping experiment.
Okay the kids are outside in bare feet and underwear. The ice is off the pond so it's time to take a swim. It must be grade B is in the making next run....
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