Upstate New York Maple Tapping Season Begins-The Sap is Flowing
Growing up in Vermont, making maple syrup is a rite of passage. I have mixed memories of boiling sap with my family. I loved sitting around the fire, tossing in big logs, and smelling the sweet aroma of maple filling the air. I did not enjoy hoofing it through near waist deep snow, carrying a near overflowing metal bucket and stumbling into the barn lightly soaked with a fine layer of snow packed into my boots. It got easier over time as my dad replaced some of the buckets with lines to funnel the sap down to a centralized collection location. That was mostly after my sister and I moved out, so his free labor pool consisted of only himself.
Now, in our new home with our first spring right around the corner, it’s time for the New York branch of Anderson Farms to break into the maple syrup game. With town meeting day being the super official time to start tapping trees, and definitely not the arrival of warmer days and colder nights, we made ready the mapleing. The previous owners of this house left some supplies, but we had to supplement a few metal spigots, as well as a drill bit appropriate for said taps. We washed the buckets, located the right trees (thanks to the blazes put there by the previous owners), put everything into a sled, and got to work.
Quick Side tangent: Welcome to the farm, Maple!
Maple came home in late November. She is a Great Prynesse and will be our homestead/livestock guardian.
She will also be incredibly spoiled.
As far as the process itself goes, it’s not complicated. Find maple tree, drill hole, hammer in spigot, attach bucket to collect sap, cover, and wait. We started small, only using the seven buckets that were left for us, but that’s a good number to begin with. I think we’ll expand our operation next year to a few more trees, or maybe even just be a bit more strategic about which ones we tap. We targeted a few trees up and down the driveway, but it might have been smarter to do a smaller area around the fire pit where we’re going to boil the sap outside. You live, and you learn.
After a few days, the sap began to flow. It got weirdly warm during the day but kept cooling off to below freezing at night, making it the perfect weather for sap to flow. As of this blog post, we’ve had two boiling sessions, both of which we conducted inside. It’s way more convenient than using the semi-janky outdoor cinderblock makeshift stove that existed around the pond, but as we get more and more sap, I want to use that space and not propane. We also slapped a big tub onto the wood stove to try and boil down the sap as we heat our house, but that’s not as effective either. Again, you live, and you learn.
Overall, though, it’s been great. We’ve boiled down maybe 8 gallons of sap into just over a quart of almost syrup. I say almost syrup because I haven’t got the tools to measure the doneness of that syrup. I don’t have a hydrometer or a candy thermometer, either of which would be great options to ensure the sap has been boiled down enough. I’ve got the almost maple mixture jarred up in the fridge, and in the next couple of days, I’ll get one or the other tool, use cheesecloth to strain out the last few imperfections, sterilize some mason jars, and seal everything up. That’s all there is to it! Making maple syrup is overall a pretty easy process, and eating fresh pancakes with syrup right from the homestead is going to be so rewarding.
