Our first maple sugaring season is now in the books. We pulled the taps on April 18th or 19th, I’ve already forgotten. By our best estimates, we gathered about 80 gallons of sap and ended up with about 2 gallons of syrup.
We tapped trees on Feb. 18, which was probably a few weeks early in hindsight, but a small amount of sap did run in those next few days.
Luckily we still had some snow banks left in April to keep the sap cool. We’d usually save up sap during the week and boil on weekends since it would take all day. We ended up burying the last few buckets over at the end of the driveway where the plowed snow had been deepest and last to melt.
I read somewhere that making syrup is a great test of patience. It’s true in so many ways: first in waiting to get enough sap to boil at the beginning of the season (where you are careful not to spill a single drop), then during the actual boiling which seems to take forever (a watched pot never boils), and then at the end of the season when you just can’t wait to be done (and you don’t mind pouring out that last half gallon of sap that somehow got too many bugs in it).
Next year, we’ll definitely have to upgrade boiling capacity in one way or another.
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- Sap fridge
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- April 5 boil
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- Empty sap fridge (April 5)
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- April 10 boil
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- Clean buckets (April 20)