Last Thursday, the entire local girl scout troop came out to visit and check out how we make maple syrup. The sap was flowing then, but this delicious warm weather has since staunched it. A short sap season, but successful nonetheless!
On Saturday, we went to pick up the custom-made welded stainless steel pan we'd ordered from some Amish fabricators. From another Amish neighbor, we bought a trunk-load of cinderblocks, and Jake pulled some old fire bricks out of the ravine near our road to build this backyard evaporator. Its quaint compared to some of these fancy-pants evaporators in a catalog we have, but it did the trick!
We ended up with about 100 gallons of sap which cooked down really efficiently this way- much more user-friendly than last year's set up of boiling the sap in soup kettles on the old cast iron cook stove in our yard.
When we were down to about 4 gallons, we took it inside to finish it- we were afraid we'd burn it directly over a fire. From yet another Amish neighbor who runs a maple sap supplies shop, we'd bought a syrup hydrometer, a tool that measures the density of liquids and that is used to determine when maple syrup is at the standard consistency.
Then we strained it, poured it into jars, and set them upside down to cool and seal.
We canned about 2 gallons of delicious, dark, sticky syrup this evening, and are christening this batch with a brunch with friends in the morning.
May your weekend be just as sweet!
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