A week of summer - in March

I am certain that the weather we have had this last week and a half has been among the most peculiar I have ever experienced. We do indeed live in the Green Mountain State. What we love is our enjoyable winters (complete with snow), our brilliantly colorful (and crisp and cool) falls, our perfect summers (lush, green, not too hot, nor too cold, nor too rainy), and even our muddy springs (they're a warm welcome after the winter, and besides, that's when the sap runs!)

Our perfect summer week, if we could special order one, would be temps in the 70s, sun every day, little to no rain...... and guess what we've had for a week or more IN MARCH? Yes, that's right! The sugaring season has come to an abrupt end, everything is blooming early, and we enjoyed being outside like we always do - just a month or two early. Record breaking weather for over a week straight. The earliest I ever remember the daffodils blooming was in mid-April. Get a load of our yard and those of our neighbors - magnolias, forsythias, daffodils, and you can even see the trees budding in the overall "street scape".... Really, it's been an incredible week.







I have shooed the kids outside a lot. And they've loved it. It's been relatively insect free to boot! (Though we have seen some lazy bees, and several of us got some mosquito bites. May the frost we're bound to get kill them for the whole season! Quickly!)



But of course, it is still March and last week and next are the time for our younger kids' annual "PE at the skating rink" (each class two times - once each week in lieu of their regular PE). It was the oddest thing to have to remind the kids to dress for skating (actually bring it along because it was too hot to dress for it) - snowpants, jackets, mittens, and long socks in tow - complete with shorts and t-shirts! Still, how fun it was. Vivace helped me put away skates in the back room after his class on Tuesday, and Constance and her little buddy dried them out front after kids took them off on Wednesday. We get another turn this coming week, but the weather will be more seasonable and fewer kids will forget their gear - which is a good thing!

Health Update

That was one incredibly long-lasting, strength-sapping virus I had, but I appear (suddenly, late on Monday) to be over it. I feel normal, even good. I can do stuff w/o being wiped. Wow. I'm so glad. The kids seem ok for the most part, though one of them in particular might have what I had, but nothing to keep anyone home from school or limit activity in any significant way. I was really wondering there, especially Monday morning when I was still not feeling well. I am GLAD to feel good and have energy again. Now I need to go get some things done (the kind that wear you out like laundry, vacuuming, ice skating, and yard work!).

Maple Sugaring - Results

The results of our maple sugaring project are plentiful. For one, we enjoyed learning about it from actually doing it ourselves and watching it up close and personal over time. For another, we like sharing what we learn and do with others, and this project allowed us to do that plenty. It still is!

And frankly, we enjoyed the process itself. I find great satisfaction in knowing my efforts bear visible/tangible fruit.

There is of course the obvious result of the product itself. We LOVE maple syrup and will enjoying eating it all year. There is the satisfaction in it being our OWN maple syrup, from our own trees, in our own backyard!

You can see in the picture above roughly how much we made give or take a little from what we've already eaten (for example, the pitcher is actually empty in this photo, but it was full last weekend!)

I think it comes to close to a gallon and a half all together. Fantastic!

Finally, in the picture below, you can see the "grades" more or less. It is what it is. You can't control or determine the outcome of your syrup or its flavor. Generally, when you first begin your boiling, you get "fancy" grade (the lighter stuff, which is more delicately flavored). It gets darker and more robust in flavor from there. This is not hard and fast but is often the case as the season progresses. The "fancy" is generally not as prevalent and is therefore more expensive.

Our family's preferred is the medium amber, and that's (I think) what we got for the most part. I don't have a kit to tell me how to grade it, but you get the idea. In the photo, I represented each "boil" of the four we did with a representative container where you could see the color. The light stuff is from our first boil - fancy. The next one (which I had to sit on top of another so you could see it properly - ignore that one on the bottom please) is a just a little darker ("light amber"), but the flavor that much richer. It was heavenly. The last two boils gave us more or less the same results as each other, and are definitely darker than the first two ("medium amber"). These are our favorite.

We're done boiling, but I presume it would just get darker from here.

Thanks so much to all who have followed our blog through this process. It's been fun, and we're all cleaned up and put away until next year (or the year after depending on what we decide when the time comes). It definitely is something we'll do again in time, and it was a lot of fun and very rewarding.

Sugaring footnote (throatnote?)

I'll try to post a picture soon of our final "product". We made close to a gallon and a half. Probably three different grades too. Really cool.

Plus I have sap set aside to share with my kids' classes when we do our maple sugaring lessons in the next couple weeks.

What I didn't share is that while all this was going on, I have not been feeling well. The boys both had strep over vacation, and I have been achy since the beginning of March. When my throat started hurting, I wondered if I might have gotten it too. So after a day or so of that, and a low-grade fever (all in the midst of boiling...) I went into the doctor on Monday (the 12th). The rapid test was negative. It kept hurting and I've been laying low all week except for necessary activities - and my sugaring project - and the throat culture that takes a couple days to grow officially came back negative yesterday.

But I'm still achy, occasionally have a low-grade fever, and my throat definitely hurts (esp. the glands but today swallowing is not very comfortable) so I've been on the phone w/the doctor a couple more times yesterday and today. We're going to go the advil/tylenol route for a couple more days, assuming it's a virus. If it still hurts Monday, I'll be going to the doctor again for sure, and they'll run some more tests.

I'm not miserable - just achy w/swollen glands and a sore throat, and I'm dragging. Most days, I've been completely spent by dinner time. I'm very glad the sugaring project was not particularly taxing - really, it's just boiling water for a long time and making sure to stir every 10-20 minutes. The sap tasted great, especially as it got thicker, and a friend tells me that sap is a great "liquid" when you're supposed to be resting and imbibing plenty of fluids. She was quite the encouragement. There are even lots of trace minerals and the like (liquid vitamins!). Doing the boiling made me feel better even when I felt crappy and it did indeed smell good and got me fresh air, all of which are good for the body and the soul and did not prevent me from resting.

So there you have it. Maple sugaring medicine woman and the "sugar spa" treatment. Yes, go ahead, laugh. I am, and then I'm going to go rest.

Sugaring update 2

It rained yesterday while I was boiling, so I had to figure out a way to keep cooking without actually adding water to the sap. I made a sort of protective "shelter" . . . . probably not very safe, but neither was it a particular fire hazard. I won't post (and didn't take any) pictures, but it was still outside and the syrup kept boiling and nothing (not water, nor dirt, nor plastic deck chairs) fell into it. As is often the case, I have to run out to pick up kids or take them places, and so the afternoon was hit or miss with the boiling - a little here there and everywhere, but nothing extended.

When I got home at 5pm from skating lessons, I fired up the camp stove (and took apart my contraption since it wasn't raining any more - that was a relief), and went in to make dinner. At some point during that 10-15 minute stretch 'til I checked on it again, the propane ran out. "Finally" was my first thought, followed quickly by "now what" and a quick transition to the stove top. When dinner came out of the oven, I put the roasting pan (aka my improvised boiling pan) in the oven to take advantage of the heat there as well. Frankly, we steamed the house up but good over the course of the next two hours, no thanks to the outside humidity from the rain. I barely got it boiled and cooled downto a point (quantity-wise) where I could refrigerate it by bedtime. So this morning I have two very full pots (about 3.5 gallons) still to do.

My beloved said (after I got the house humidity back down to a reasonable level by opening several windows and running several fans despite temps in the 30s....) that perhaps refilling the propane tank and finishing it off outside today would be the best way to go. That is a relief, though honestly it hadn't even occurred to me. He had said one tank and I guess I was very committed to that even though I knew we'd be refilling the tank to use with the new grill we'll be setting up in the next week or so (whose box is currently gracing my living room...).

So my day begins with my monthly "Four Winds" Training (for teaching an environmental science class once a month in each of my younger children's classrooms). The topic this month? Maple Sugaring! And then I will fill the propane tank and spend the rest of the day boiling on the back porch (and praying it doesn't rain again). Fun!

Sugaring update

Well, we're doing our fourth and final boiling today. I just emptied the cooler and put it up in the bathtub to wash out a little later. The propane is holding out and the pots are full. Yesterday, I pulled the taps (two) out of the smaller tree that wasn't dripping as much. I'm still collecting in the big tree and probably will collect through today, possibly into tomorrow depending on where the boiling is at this afternoon.

The last couple times I've boiled, I've spread it over two days. The first time, it was out of necessity; I just couldn't finish. As it turned out, we were able to finish it off in the presence of my in-laws, which was pretty special (to me anyway) that they got to see how each stage worked, in person, even if not intentionally. The second time, it was by choice, and I put the smaller (6 qt) pot in the fridge overnight because I just didn't want to stay up late to finish it off; I wanted to relax with my beloved watching a TV show and get to bed at a good time. Finishing it the next day went great, and allowed me to add in a couple more gallons of sap first before finishing it off fairly easily with the kids around to watch and help and around my schedule.

So today, the goal is to get it to a manageable (and refrigeratable) level by bedtime, w/o being a slave to it. I doubt I'll finish it off, hence why I'll leave the taps in a little longer. I can handle an extra couple gallons tomorrow if need be.

All in all, we have made, in the three boilings so far, a gallon of syrup. This last boil of 12+ gallons will easily bring that to at least 5 quarts. That's a fantastic amount and it feels wonderful to have made our own. I think I've enjoyed sharing the process with any and everyone interested at least as much as I've enjoyed actually making and tasting it. If you're reading this and have encouraged us, or stopped by to check it all out, please know that it means a lot and has helped make this a uniquely special and memorable project! We have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Maple Sugaring - Boiling

(aka making the syrup!)

Once you've collected your sap, the big question is, "Now What?"

Good question.

Sap from sugar maples (the trees in question) is generally 2% sugar, 98% water. That means to make syrup, you have to get rid of all the water.

To be more precise, to make one gallon or syrup, you need roughly 40 gallons of sap. In our case, we'll take our 10 gallons of sap and attempt to make about a quart of syrup. [For you metric folks, that's 40 liters of sap to make 1 liter of syrup.]

The first thing we did was take advantage of the freezing temperatures. Apparently, the Indians used to thicken their sap by removing the ice when it would freeze in their collection vessels. You see, the sugar (syrup) in the sap doesn't freeze; only the water does. The ice catches the sugar like honey in a honeycomb, but what's frozen is simply water.

So I drained and "shook out" my ice to the best of my ability to increase the percent of sugar in my sap and hopefully reduce my boiling time (and cost) by eliminating a gallon or two of water at no charge. I also poured off and shook out the liquid from my jugs when they froze and then threw out the ice. We think it did make a difference.

We also had to decide how and where we would do our boiling. Generally people do the majority of this evaporation process outside because the steam created by boiling off gallons and gallons of water is enough to literally peel off your wallpaper - no kidding.

The first idea we considered seriously was to use our firepit with wood and/or charcoal. Wood was out of the question financially, and honestly, I'm at least a little intimidated by the firepit.

As part of our consideration, and after a lot of research online and in the stores over the weekend, I did purchase a camping grill that we could place over the firepit to hold the pot(s), and which we can use later in the year to grill things other than hotdogs and marshmallows when we're burning branches and leaves. We are not adding that to our "cost" of this project, even if we do decide to try this at some point just for fun, since it was something we'd considered buying anyway.

In the meantime, we began to research the option of using a grill or a camp stove and use propane. It seemed after all our homework, that this would be the best route to try this year. Rather than purchase one at this point (we're still experimenting and are wary of sinking too much money into this project), we set out to borrow a two-burner propane stove. We ended up borrowing two; one was really handy (a neighbor) and the other, a different style, came ready to hook up to our 20# propane tank which seemed more efficient and simpler. I got both stoves Tuesday night and filled the tank Wednesday morning, and began boiling using both stoves.

It went great. As you can see in the pictures, we basically used the one stove to warm up the sap until the small propane fuel cell we found leftover in the shed ran out (after about an hour and a half) and did our main firing on the one hooked up to the 20# tank using an oversized lasagna tin leftover from Christmas.

I boiled for three hours and then turned it off to go get Vivace from school, and then boiled again for an hour before going to ice skating lessons. During this time I was able to "work" inside with the door open (it was 50 degrees out!) so I could monitor it and stir every 10-15 minutes and work out whatever kinks needed to be figured out. I was able then to combine all four pans into the two pots on the kitchen stove, having decreased my total quantity by half.

Patience came home from school just before we left for skating, and she willingly stirred every 10 minutes or so, so I was able to leave them simmering on the stove for the time we were gone. This was for a little less than two hours; the fan was on, the kitchen window was open, and she was told to turn it off if it got to be too much for her, or if the condensation built up on the window or door.

By the time I came back, we were able to combine the two pots into the larger one, which holds two gallons. It also tasted like watery syrup now, which excited us to no end. We showed off the whole process to our neighbor who lent us the camp stove and to some friends from skating who dropped by.


This was also, coincidentally, Constance's birthday (we call her our "sugar baby" because she was born during the sugaring season). I had to make her birthday dinner and we had a few gifts yet to open, so I was very distracted until about 8pm when I poured the remaning pot (two gallons) back on the pan outside. This is a very efficient way to boil and we will definitely do this method again, as I was able to boil it down again to half its volume (now about a gallon or less) in an hour with no concern for moisture in the house.


At this point, I needed to watch much more closely. I was guessing our target quantity was about a quart, and as the level of liquid in the shallow pan decreased, I stirred every five minutes or so. It was becoming much more viscous and very fun. Please do remember you can click on the pictures to see a larger view; you can see how the syrup boils down in these three nighttime shots in particular.


Eventually (after about 20 more minutes), I poured it through a t-shirt to filter out the debris and the niter as it's called (by products of things falling in while boiling and natural residue from the sap and the boiling process).

The result was beautifully clear and I brought it to the kitchen stove to finish off. I boiled until it "aproned" off the spatula and was supposedly 219 degrees (assuming my thermometer was accurate, which I doubt). I then filtered it again through some torn t-shirt rags and voila: almost three pints of beautiful fancy grade (light!) syrup, plus a half cup full of "sugar sand" which tasted great spread on bread today. We've dubbed this first batch of syrup "Birthday Syrup" in honor of Constance.