Mud Season
Here's a look at my road today. As you can tell by the photo, I was driving on the wrong (or correct for my overseas readers)side of the road to avoid the gigantic ruts on the right side of the road.
I put 11 maple taps in yesterday around noon, and had three and a half gallons of sap by nightfall-and one of the taps had fallen out! Today a quick peek shows at least another half gallon of sap in each jug. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.
I have been trying to reduce the first gallon and a half on the woodstove. I forgot last time I made maple syrup, I had the old kitchen woodstove to help. You are really supposed to do any quantity outside, due to the volume of moisture boiling huge amounts of sap can create.
One year I kept juggling sap as I was reducing, adding fresh to the pot, and went to bed with about a gallon of sap in the pot and the woodstove stoked. I awoke in the wee hours to a house full of acrid smoke and three inches of black tar burned to the bottom of the pot. I guess I underestimated how close to finished the sap was that night!
The house smelt of burnt sugar for weeks-and I skipped a couple years of sap boiling because I just could not stand the smell!! Of course, the first thing I did last night was to accidentally splash sap on the hot stove while I was filling the pot...ah, the memories of smell!
The temperature outside is perfect sap running-above freezing days, and freezing nights. Those kinds of temps also make the local dirt roads come unglued, as you can tell from the photo.
We still have several feet of snow on the front yard-we are always the last ones to lose the snow. I think it must blow down the pond and over the trees and just dump right in the front yard.
Saw some more robins today in the sumac berries-those tend to be full of bugs, so I am guessing that the robins are after the insects in the old apples and sumac berries, and not the fruits themselves. Going to be awhile yet before they are worm hunting on my lawn!
Here's a look at my road today. As you can tell by the photo, I was driving on the wrong (or correct for my overseas readers)side of the road to avoid the gigantic ruts on the right side of the road.
I put 11 maple taps in yesterday around noon, and had three and a half gallons of sap by nightfall-and one of the taps had fallen out! Today a quick peek shows at least another half gallon of sap in each jug. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.
I have been trying to reduce the first gallon and a half on the woodstove. I forgot last time I made maple syrup, I had the old kitchen woodstove to help. You are really supposed to do any quantity outside, due to the volume of moisture boiling huge amounts of sap can create.
One year I kept juggling sap as I was reducing, adding fresh to the pot, and went to bed with about a gallon of sap in the pot and the woodstove stoked. I awoke in the wee hours to a house full of acrid smoke and three inches of black tar burned to the bottom of the pot. I guess I underestimated how close to finished the sap was that night!
The house smelt of burnt sugar for weeks-and I skipped a couple years of sap boiling because I just could not stand the smell!! Of course, the first thing I did last night was to accidentally splash sap on the hot stove while I was filling the pot...ah, the memories of smell!
The temperature outside is perfect sap running-above freezing days, and freezing nights. Those kinds of temps also make the local dirt roads come unglued, as you can tell from the photo.
We still have several feet of snow on the front yard-we are always the last ones to lose the snow. I think it must blow down the pond and over the trees and just dump right in the front yard.
Saw some more robins today in the sumac berries-those tend to be full of bugs, so I am guessing that the robins are after the insects in the old apples and sumac berries, and not the fruits themselves. Going to be awhile yet before they are worm hunting on my lawn!
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