Mid-Wis Maple, Day 29

Tuesday was kinda busy...we went up to the woods pretty early, intending to finish the syrup that'd been in the pan since March 17(!). While waiting, we stabilized / anchored the steps we'd shoved onto the back of the bus with a couple of angle brackets.


Then it was a matter of hanging around—there was some frozen sap in the pails, but not enough to bother collecting--there are already too many discs of frozen sap in the bulk tank, these will thaw when it warms up and starts running again.

You can (barely) see that the level is considerably down in the pan...


Mike is checking the sugar with a refractometer. We do the final check with a floating hydrometer, scooping up the syrup into a tall, skinny can to get enough depth to float it (not shown).


When it's ready, we lift the pan off the fire onto the adjacent (empty) fire pit and scoop it into old milk cans (also not shown, except for the scoop).


Those are hauled down to X's, filtered though muslin into the stainless steel tub (the one on the right with the wooden handles), scooped out of that into felt filters, drained into pots that go onto a propane burner (or the kitchen stove this year)...


...to reheat to bottling temperature and bottled, either into ad hoc commercial jugs, or seal-able bottles for home use. We got something over 13 gallons of syrup out of that batch.

I was happy to finish at least one cycle...you never know how a season is going to be. Two years ago it started a week before I got there, and we finished and got everything washed up and put away some days before I left. This year I came a week earlier, and although we don't know how long the season will run, it wasn't over when I left; they collected yesterday, and have a full pan of sap cooking, with more in the bulk tank.

I flew back to San Diego yesterday, with enough syrup to last me a year. Next year? Who knows?

Next
Home