Since we boiled sap for a long time the other day, when we started up again it didn't take very long for our condensed sap to get up to heat and boil off enough to become maple syrup!
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| Our first jar of unfiltered maple syrup |
We pulled a quart out of our first draw off of syrup and discussed what we would do to it. This is our $10,000 jar of maple and we thought maybe we should bathe in it! But no. Sunday morning I made a big batch of waffles and we poured it over. Ab-solut-ely delicious!
Saturday night, as we boiled the collected sap, we learned the excitement and the tedium of making maple syrup. We wait and wait for the temperature on our automatic draw off to go up high enough. It climbs within a few tenths of a degree and you get all excited that it's going to get there - then the temperature drops a degree. By the time it finally starts spitting maple syrup you can hardly stand it!
After it draws off though, it's another hour to hour and a half of waiting, watching for foaming, feeding the fire, and standing around. The great part of this was that we had friends come by to share our excitement. We really, really enjoyed that.
We made about 15 gallons of maple syrup on Saturday. The temperature outside dropped again and the maple sap hasn't been flowing much, but the temperature is supposed to go up again tomorrow!
Don't forget to go over to Homestead Revival for the Barn Hop!
Yay! Congratulations. A $10,000 jar of syrup? Bet those waffles tasted like a million bucks. LOL Really been enjoying your posts. :-D
ReplyDeleteThank you! We figured that the cost of everything that went into setting up the system made the first jar worth $10,000!
DeleteWow! To 15 gallons so far!
ReplyDeleteNow I know why a gallon is going for $78. Worth every penny.
ReplyDeleteIt is an incredible amount of work. And we haven't filtered and bottled it yet!
DeleteYummy! We'll be off to the local maple farm this weekend to get our fill for the year. Good stuff!
ReplyDeleteYAY!! Fifteen gallons so far, very awesome!!
ReplyDelete