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....
Tapping began early this year. Let's see, about February 6-9 the first half of the taps were set. The second half were set between February 22-25. Mirah is out for the main part of this season for her new CD release so she and Dylan worked in January to set up the old lines and plot out some new, clean and set up evaporator and generally get everything ready and underway. They got to make the first batch of syrup before she headed back West and the weather cooperated to let Dylan travel back to VT in time for Sol's birthday. Dylan, Meghan and kids got back to the farm in time for the second round of sugaring weather with BK from Burlington along to be major help person. More trees tapped, cold nights, sap runs, boiling boiling, syrup. Visit from Bull and Karin. Wood moved and split. Meghan and kids leave again. Cold snap, more syrup. Cassy and Jenny show up in time for some bucket collecting (we still have about 250 buckets out there) and sap tank pumping and ...boiling. A day of canning, after much coffee drinking procrastination, tied the sap run days together. Today is March 11th, just over a month into the season and we have made 290 gallons of really good tasting syrup. Susie's chickens re also starting to lay more eggs and Margie is picking up a Jacob's ram to join the flock, on Thursday.
One hat knit from the skeins of beautiful sportweight wool in brown grey and white. Wool spun by Loch's farm in Springville PA. This will be sold at farmers market or christmas time.
Last night was an all records broken night. Sap collected, syrup made. And the weather just keeps on 20s/40s. It isn't supposed to go above 40 until after April starts.
On Monday we put a hole in our big plastic collection tank. While it was 300 gallons full. We didn't notice that the board keeping it away from the wheel had broken and so it rode for a while rubbing up against the tire. Yesterday Margie welded it together with another piece of the same plastic and today we will try out the fix. It was our one big disaster of the season so far and we made it through!
A huge Thank you to all the visitors and bucket pullers who made this season extra fun, enjoyable and easy.
When we first spotted the moon tonight it looked as if the hill was actually on fire. I had to look twice. night everyone and happy spring. Speaking of spring, supposedly it is arriving 8 hours early every year as tracked by sat images since 1982. You can add your spring observation for the phrenologists: http://www.sws-wis.com/lifecycles/dbase.html#submit
The snow is falling like its not sure this is where it is supposed to be. Slow motion like.
The past couple of days have been cold, but yesterday when we tapped the big tree by the pond the sap was running on both the shady and sunny side. Now Mirah is "hoping not to get the dreaded thing." Today looks like a runner. Sol and Dyl had a discussion about probabilities. Dylan notices that when we are completely under prepared, no wood, the sap runs like crazy. Likewise when all hands are sick or missing from the farm the sap runneth like mad. Sol says there is no relation between things we can prepare for, like wood, and sap run, but there Could be a relation between sickness and sap run. Dylan took last night to write up the sap log. total sap collected this year 8680 gallons.
Sol and I left for a week.
We came back just as Mirah was arriving.
Dyl and Marg had made 200 gallons of syrup.
That's half the season or so.
we hope
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