The Maple Files 🍁

Is there anything more Canadian than maple syrup? 

I have been so excited about this sweet little venture. Everyday we tromp around in the woods, snowshoeing around from tree to tree, checking our buckets, and spending boatloads of time outside. Despite being little saplings in the maple syrup world, I wholeheartedly loved every part of it....perhaps we've found our calling?

Turns out making maple syrup is pretty easy, as long as you've got some minimal equipment, time and maple trees. We've gleaned some tricks and tips from seasoned maplers, and used tapmytrees.com to answer all our maple Q's. Let me break it down;

Tap: For the sap to flow, the nights need to be cold (below 0ºC) and the days need to be warm (above 0ºC). So on the first signs of warmer weather, we strapped on the baby and our snowshoes and headed into the woods to tap some trees. Turns out it's a lot harder to identify maple trees when there are no leaves, something we had never really thought about before. We did poke a few holes in a few innocent ash and oak trees before we found those sweet sugee trees. There is really no second guessing them, as as soon as you drill a hole, the sap starts dripping! Instantly gratifying. So we drilled a few holes, tapped in a some spigots and hung our buckets. Hot tapping tips;

• Tap the trees on the southside---We all like to feel the sun on our faces in the spring.
• Don't tap the trees too early (We tapped early, and then there was another cold snap, so had to re-drill the holes again a couple weeks later)
• If you don't have enough spigots, you can use a sumac reed--this one is yet to be confirmed, and also very impressive. Tip given from a woodsman who's way out of our league.

Collect: Perhaps the most satisfying step. It's like checking the mailbox, anticipating how much or little sap flowed through the day from each tree. Each day after collecting the sap, we poured the tree pee into big buckets that chilled in nature's refrigerator, until it was time to boil ie: the four foot snowbank outside our doorstep. Fun fact- Sap is like milk, needs to be kept cold and used within seven days or it too will go sour.

Boil #1: As mentioned we had tapped a bit early in the season. Initially we had collected about 40 litres, and then temps dropped and the sap stopped flowing. While not constituting a huge amount of sap, we were still eager to see the process through. We brought our sap reserves inside, filtered it to get the forest bits out and boiled 'er down. The ratio of sap to maple syrup is high. It takes about 40 litres to make 1 litre of syrup. So yah, we got about one leet of the sweet stuff on our first boil.

Boil #2&#3: Fast forward a couple weeks, the temps had hit a stride and the sap was consistently flowing. We collected and saved our sap through the week, and did a couple boils outside over the fire, which was very time consuming (10+ hours) but so nourishing. To be outside in the fresh air all day long is really what fills our sap buckets to the brim. Throw in the big simmering pot of fireside butter chicken that Ty stewed, and it really doesn't get any better! 

Consume: What's on the menu? Something drizzled with maple syrup. After boiling down and filtering again to get any fire bits out, we are left with a bunch of the sweet amber sauce that Baby J lovingly calls "sugee syrup". Yes, a time consuming project but so satisfying to make something from scratch and to spend time outside each day among our tree friends. Can't recommend it enough---if you've got a maple tree in your yard, give 'er a tap!

Facts & Figures: 

Tress tapped: 7

Sap collected: ≈ 300 litres

Maple syrup yield: ≈ 5 litres

Stacks of pancakes devoured: I'd rather not say