We Fire Up The Maple Sap Evaporator

Yesterday was a banner day on Fitzgerald's Family Farm.  We worked on lines in the morning and in the afternoon we filled our evaporator with water and fired it up for the first time.

We started the day by going back to the area I had tapped and fixed all the damage I had marked.  Squirrels and chipmunks love to chew on maple sap lines!  They are a maple sap tappers nemesis.

Marked damaged line

Squirrel damage

Repairing the line

Fitz was very happy with this nice neat junction of sap lines.

We didn't see any bears or deer, but we found evidence that they'd been around!

Deer pooh

Bear pooh

Later that afternoon, we filled the evaporator with water, loaded and started the firebox, and heated the water up to boiling to clear up the impurities and oils that might be in the evaporator (it's brand new), and checked for leaks - none, thank goodness.  We drained off the dirty water after the fire went out.  This is the culmination of months and months of preparation.

Everything worked great!

Now, cross your fingers in hopes that today we'll get some sap to boil!

A Whim Pays Off

Yesterday, on a whim I decided I would take a look at a site that has wonderful classifieds for the state of Pennsylvania: Pennswoods.

We've been looking for a horse/stock trailer for some time now and I found one that looked good and the price was very, very reasonable!

We looked at it, found it had everything we were looking for, and brought it home!

This is going to be really handy for wood hauling, future critter moving (I hope it'll be a lot easier to move the pigs!), and it's even big enough to move our little tractor if need be!  

The Sap Is Really Running!

Yesterday, I tapped one of our smaller sugar bushes (a sugar bush is the name for an area of tapped maple trees) with about 265 taps put into the trees.

The sap is really running well! As I drilled the holes to put in the spiles, the sap would start running out of the holes and down the tree. I used a rubber mallet to get the spiles in as fast as I could because I didn't want to waste a precious drop!

The work is quite physically exhaustiing (I went to bed at 8:30 last night!), but I hope it will be quite rewarding. We have, for the past three years, sold our collected maple sap to a local maple syrup producer. This year, for the first time, we will be boiling our own sap!

Please join us on our journey!

Sounds Like Maple Syrup

Sounds Like Maple Syrup 

by Sherri Doyle 

Art by Jim Bernardin

from Highlights Five

Branches creak in the chilly breeze -

Time to tap the maple trees.

Sap drips fast in a silver pail

Snow boots crunch back up the trail.

Sap is splashing, bucket pours.

Bubbles thicken.  Fire roars.

Time for pancakes, "Mmm so yummy!"

http://sheridoyle.blogspot.com/2012/02/poetry-friday-sounds-like-maple-syrup.html

Isn't this completely adorable?  Check out the dog.  

I'm tapping maple trees today.

Happy President's Day!

They just don't make them like that anymore!

We're Working On The Lines

We've been cleaning up our maple lines and installing new lines in preparation for tapping the trees this next week.

We run high tensile wire down the line of maple trees and then attach our tubing to it.  

I use an automatic wire tying tool and wire ties to attach the tubing to the high tensile wire.  The wire ties are a piece of wire with loops on either end.  I wrap them around the tube and the high tensile wire, put the hook on the wire tying tool through the loops, and pull.  The end of the wire tying tool spins and twists the wire tight.  

Attaching the tubing well keeps the tubing from sagging and getting pockets of sap and it looks more tidy.  

I do this the whole length of the wire and tubing at about 18-inch intervals.

Our children and their friends have been helping us to clean up one of our other sugar bushes by finding trees that need to be cut off with a chain saw and clearing fallen branches.   

We'll get everything connected, tapped, and very soon begin getting sap!

Targeting Children With Treats

Here's a great idea I got from Joel Salatin in The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer.

Rather than spend more money on healthy eating initiatives or agencies, stop government subsidies for corn that will be turned into high fructose corn syrup.  The price of sugar laden goodies and snacks will have to increase and families will, hopefully, cut down on buying them!  What if a bag of oranges costs half as much as a box of goodies?  I'm probably thinking much too simplistically, but it sounds like a win-win to me!

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