Maple Syrup... who makes their own? Help?

[Organics North]

Cool,
A subject I know something about. We tap between 40 and 50 trees each spring. We make around 10 to 15 gallons of syrup a season. So that means we are collecting over 500+ gallons of sap. Depending on the weather, you may need to boil weekly even if you have your holding barrels stuck in a snow pile. (Raw sap goes bad (cloudy) quick. Also you will need a very large supply of firewood. My boiling pan holds 40 or so gallons. To get the job done over a weekend I usually boil 100 or so gallons in a session. (Think large camp fire needing to be maintained for 30+ hours!) So lots of good quality firewood must be available.

On collecting I use sap sacks, the bags that hang on the tree.
Link to site showing pics. (I have no idea who they are and never bought from them.. Link just for pics.)
http://schmidling.com/maplesyrup.htm

I do not collect daily unless... It is perfect conditions and the trees are running hard and they fill the bags each day. I collect daily near the end of the season when warm day temps may spoil my sap. Other than that I would say every other day. One or twice a week would be tough with out a gravity feed hose system to central storage tank. (Like the producers use.) It could be feasible if you have high tree density in a small area. Mine are way spread out. I hand carry 6 gallon pails on parts of our route. Other area I can drive up with the snowmobile or ATV (depending on snow depth.)

Our season at 48N in northern WI is from second week of March until around the second week of April.. All depending on the year. (Your looking for days above freezing and nights below freezing.)

Lots of work but lots of fun too. My 4 and 6 year old love helping out. (They also like the product.)
I like the fact that it gets you out in the woods at a time of the year that is real special. Also it is when those in snowy climates start to get stir crazy, and making syrup lets you appreciate early spring! The time to stop is when the soft or red maples buds start to break into leaf. (I am tapping hard or rock or we call them Sugar Maples, which do not break leaf until much later.)

ON

 

[The Vail Benton's]

Amazing!

 

[lupinfarm]

My neighbour taps the maples on his property and collects once a week to once every 2 weeks. I wish we had maples on our property but none! I may talk to the farmer who owns all the woodlots around me (he was the seller on our property) since he doesn't tap any of the trees on our road, just the ones by his house.

 

[SKR8PN]

Collecting the sap......will depend a LOT on the temp difference between the morning and evening.............
Some days you will be moving/cooking sap once a day.............
Some days you will need to move/cook it TWICE a day.........
DEPENDS on temp change...............
DAMHIK............

 

[Henrietta23]

i think where i will be there is like 2 weeks with those temps

now i just have to pray that the tree i want to tap is maple

I think you need freezing temperatures at night and above freezing during the day for sap to flow.

Other types of trees give sap as well. We had birch syrup in Alaska that was quite good!

 

[Wifezilla]

I have 2 huge maples in my yard and tried to tap one last year. Didn't work. We are 40's during the day and 20's at night now so I may try again. In WIsconsin, when to tap was a no-brainer. In Colorado....don't know if it will even work.

 

[Organics North]

Yup, one can tap anything in the maple family. (Boxelder included) Just have to boil off more water as the sugar content is lower than in Sugar Maple.. As stated birch family can be tapped too. I have not tried it but I hear Yellow birch syrup is very good.

Wifezilla,
Out in Colorado do you get a couple of months where the temp does not get above freezing?? I am wondering if that is part of the problem.

It would be very interesting to hear if any one has had luck tapping outside of the NE, Upper midwest and Canada. I think you must have some period of time where the temp stays below freezing before they will pump sap hard???

ON

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I notice that this is mostly a northern thing and I read a little bit about it and found that sap collection is highly dependant on the temperatures. So what is the southern most state that is able to do sap collection.

We hope to purchase a farm along the NC/VA boarder near the blue ridge parkway. This would be cool to do, but is it doable in that climate?

ETA: LOL Just now read the rest of the thread and the post above mine.

 

[Wifezilla]

Out in Colorado do you get a couple of months where the temp does not get above freezing??

No, usually our winter temps are in the 40's. It has been a bit cold this year though. Still not below freezing during the day that often.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/trav...onthly/80911?from=today_topnav_BusinessTravel

 

[valmom]

We tapped 6 trees last year in our yard- it was such fun we are going to tap more this year- I went out this summer and marked which ones were sugar maples (as opposed to swamp maples- which we do have more of). I used (new!) 5 gallon gas cans to transport the sap in. We collected daily, but if we couldn't boil daily because of work, we packed the gas cans out in the snow to keep. We didn't keep sap longer than 2 days because we didn't want it to spoil- even if we were up half the night boiling!

We boiled it on the stove even though everyone said not to, but had no sticky ill effects on our walls or cabinets from the steam. This year, I think, I am going to build a rocket stove outside on our patio to boil off the majority of the water. I've been kicking the idea around, and I think it could work.

Our problem has been somehow innoculating some of the syrup with mold spores. It grew icky green islands of mold after awhile. I am going to try making maple sugar this year from some of the sap- we had way too much syrup. (we still have a couple of pint jars in the fridge.)