Making Maple Syrup on the North Shore
For a couple of seasons now I have been working with a friend to
tap
Maple trees for Maple syrup.
It is quite a process.
1st you clean up a bunch of milk jugs.
2nd you drill the trees and put in the spiles (the metal tube that goes
into the tree and holds the jug).
3rd you spend several weeks hauling several hundred gallons of sap out
of the woods. This year we collected around 500 gallons, weighing
about 4,000 pounds!
Luke, my 4th son,
collects sap.
This is Hana, Luke's
girlfriend, helping out. We collected 98 gallons that day with Luke
and Hana collecting the lion's share!
Marcus, my third son,
pours sap into an old 200 gallon milk cooler for storage.
Here
is a picture of Kurt Mead adding sap to our main evaporator.
This is one of our finishing kettles.
We know it is done when the sap reaches
7 degrees F above the boiling
point of water.
(By the way, you have to check what water is boiling at that day.
It can be +- a few degrees of 212, depending on the barometric pressure
and altitude.)
Kurt is an interesting fellow. Besides being a
great guy and knowledgeable about many things outdoor, he is one of the
world's top drangonfly experts. Check out his website here.
Here I am pouring some of the syrup into a
gallon jug for settling.
A tree came down right where I
had been standing, narrowly missing me and all of our equipment and sap!
God is good!
Contact me at paul@taintor.us
or
give a call at 218-353-7473.