maple syrup season

[asakiyume]

I subscribed to a local newspaper, a physical paper that comes to the house, for the first time ever, and it's a decision that delights me. Even the ads delight me. If it weren't for the ads, I wouldn't have found out about a place nearby called the Strawbale Café (built with straw bales, but then plastered over), which, at this time of year, makes its own maple syrup.

We went for a visit this past weekend.

The bottom part of their evaporator dates from 1959.



Here is the main line, reaching up into the sugarbush. (Isn't that a great name for a stand of sugar maples?)



And here you can just about see the much thinner piping that goes to each tree. In the past, people would collect sap in buckets and then carry it somewhere to boil it down, but now they generally use piping like this.



When I used to tap maple trees, I gathered the sap in old milk jugs:



But back to the present: This apparatus pumps water back up the line at the end of the season to clean the lines and (somehow) help seal things off (I didn't really understand that part).



And here are the sap storage tanks.



Last but not least, inside the Strawbale Café, where everyone was enjoying fresh maple syrup on pancakes, and the manager was urging people to come back in the summer, when they have a much more extensive menu.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

that sounds so awesome.

[asakiyume]

It was a lot of fun--and made me nostalgic for when I used to do it myself.

[minoanmiss]

You KNOW I must ask how it was making your own maple syrup. :)

[asakiyume]

It was wonderful! After an abortive effort to boil it up over an open fire in our backyard, I decided to do it on the kitchen stove. It takes hours and fills the kitchen with a sweet vapor. All the pictures I have on all our cupboards begin to curl. If it's a good day and I have, say, six gallons, I can't put them all in the big pot at once, so after what's in the pot boils down a little, I add a new gallon jug of sap. And then slowly, the boiled down stuff starts to turn syrup-colored. It's truly magical.

The tapping part: we bought an electric drill that could take a 5/16ths drill bit--that's the size you make the holes. And a local farm supply store had the taps. In the olden days you'd let the sap drip from the tap into a bucket, and the buckets were usually covered with little roof-shaped lids to keep the snow and twigs out. What I did was use plastic piping to cover the dripping part of the tap and to go directly into a (cleaned-out) milk jug, through the lid (I cut a hole in the lid). Then, once a day, I'd go out with about six empty jugs, and I'd check to see how full the ones on the trees had gotten. If the jug was full, I'd replace it with an empty one. If it was partially full, I usually emptied it into one of the empty ones and then put it back on the tree. Then I'd lug what I'd collected home, stick it in the fridge, and in the evening do the boiling. (I don't have any sugar maples on my property, so I got permission to tap trees on the property of the New England Small Farms Institute, which is within walking distance. One year, though, I also tapped our red maple tree, since you can also boil down the sap from that.)

This entry has photos under a cut that document the process.

[minoanmiss]

reads and is fascinated Thank you for telling me! This is just so vivid and must have made you feel connected to thousands of years of tradition.

[asakiyume]

It does!

And it can be done anywhere--if you have a sizable sugar maple near you, you could ask permission to tap it :-)

[osprey_archer]

This is so cool! I've always wanted to see an actual sugaring off! Do they do their own maple sugar candies too, or just syrup?

[asakiyume]

I didn't ask, but I'm guessing only syrup, because they're an offshoot of the restaurant, and if the restaurant made candy, I'm sure they'd offer it for sale.

[rachelmanija]

Wait, you tapped maple trees? Did you make your own syrup? Did you ever taste the pre-syrup sap?

[asakiyume]

Yes, Yes, and Yes! Here's a picture of the healing angel as a kid, drinking the sap straight from the tree:



It tastes slightly sweet--like ever-so-slightly-sweet water.

My "maple tapping" tag has reports from back in the days when I was doing it. this entry is apparently the first... it was from my second month on LJ, and coincidentally, it's the entry I referenced some weeks ago when I was talking about microseasons.

PS

[asakiyume]

this entry has some more documentary photos.

[amaebi]

Cool!

[asakiyume]

Very nostalgic--and tasty!

[mallorys_camera]

INCREDIBLY cool!!! :-)

[asakiyume]

I am **sure** there is someplace near you doing this; if you get a chance, I highly recommend going out and visiting a sugar shack.

[amaebi]

That looks like apex glamour to me.

[asakiyume]

It's a wonderful mix of glamour and actual transformation!

[cmcmck]

What a wonderfully 'ramshackle' process! :o)

[asakiyume]

Definitely!

[lizziebelle]

How fun! I should find a sugaring place around here. We went to one on a field trip when I was in third grade. I remember tasting the sap and syrup out of little paper cups, and crunching through the snow to see the buckets on the trees.

[asakiyume]

Yes!! We did it when I was about that age too, and I carried that memory with me until I finally had a chance to do it myself. Field trips *do* make a difference to kids.

[evelyn_b]

I love local newspapers! I've just started reading them this year (at the library; my love doesn't yet extend to being able to commit to getting one every week) and it's been an experience. They're so different from one another - and it's a delight, as you say, to find out all about local happenings.

Best of luck to Strawbale Cafe and their trees. It looks like a perfect place to get breakfast.

[asakiyume]

Reading them at a library is totally legit and affirms the library in its decision to have them. So glad you're enjoying one!

If I visit Strawbale Cafe in the summer--and I intend to--I'll report on their summertime menu :-)

[wayfaringwordhack]

What a delightful place and concept. Piping is not very pittoresque, but it is a lot warmer and convenient for sure. :P

[asakiyume]

Agreed!

[st_martin_a]

That looks like a fair bit of snow!

[asakiyume]

It's not all that deep, but it's been cold, so it hasn't melted away. (Just today and yesterday have been warmer, but still not enough to melt it all away.)