It's springtime here in Mary's World....maybe not officially, but the weather is finally warming up and it's MARCH!
We have a friend who has a farm in Iowa and he makes fresh maple syrup every spring. He taps so many trees! Well this year, he asked if I would like him to tap our maple tree. We have a HUGE maple in our front yard. I told him that would be great. So Sunday afternoon he came over and tapped our maples with two taps. We have gotten over 7 gallons of sap. I cooked sap on the stove almost all day. I just took our first batch off the stove. From the first five gallons of sap, we have about 3/4 of a quart jar of fresh maple syrup. That is pretty cool. No chemicals, no preservatives...just fresh maple syrup. Our tree should be flowing with sap all week as the weather continues to warm here.
It's really a neat process. My two younger children check the taps twice a day and help collect the sap bottles. All three kids are excited about the homemade syrup.
We have learned that since our tree stands alone the buds are not incumbered by other trees (like in a forest) and so the buds collect full sun without competition from other trees. This enables a higher volume of sap. The sap is as free flowing as water is. (It is...sugarwater.) It gets thicker as you cook the sap down and boil out the water. The sap eventually turns a beautiful amber color. It is thinner than syrup you buy at the store. It can be stored in the fridge and heated in the microwave for serving purposes.
I hope we are able to tap our trees again.
Tomorrow we will go out and take pictures of our sap collection and post them on the blog.
Happy spring!
