Post by strippitman on Mar 19, 2018 13:12:54 GMT -5
Back when I was in high school in the early 90's I was really good friends with a girl and used to spend a lot of time on her family farm. While being on the farm I got to be really good friends with her mom and dad, especially her dad. Her dad (Dick was his name) would eventually be one of the ushers in my wedding. Back in the 80's and 90's Dick had a maple syrup camp where we would cook maple sap down to make maple syrup. It was something I became very fond of and looked forward to every spring. In the fall of '98 Dick and his wife moved to a different farm and the syrup making plans made a big change. The "new" farm had 20 acres of woods loaded with big mature maples. Dick decided he no longer wanted to cook the syrup himself and made arrangements with a local big syrup producer that would allow us to bring our sap to them and they would give us syrup in return. The arrangement was that we would get 1/2 of what our sap would produce into syrup. It takes anywhere from 40-50 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. So for every 40 gallons of sap we would haul in they would give us a 1/2 gallon of syrup. Back when we cooked our own we would tap about 75 trees each season because that's about all we could handle with one fire pit and one pan. When we quit doing our own cooking we tapped about 250 trees because we could haul to the big producer every night. It was enjoyable but I really missed the time spent in the woods cooking the sap down. I always knew at some point I would get back into making my own syrup. In 2008 Dick died from a long battle with cancer. Since then me and his son who is 5 years older than me have become very close friends. For the past few years we have been talking about making maple syrup again. Our holdup was always because we could never get enough wood cut to get us through an entire syrup season. Last spring our woods got logged and we have been cutting wood like crazy since then. Back in January we started talking about possibly doing it this year. I went around and scavenged all the concrete blocks I could get my hands on to build a fire pit with and immediately built the pit. At this point there was no turning back. For our first year back it has been a crazy run. We put out 75 taps right before a warm spell in early February and gathered about 220 gallons of sap on the first 2 days! This past weekend was our 6th consecutive weekend of syrup making. I can honestly say I'm about ready for it to be done this year. 6 weeks is a fairly long run and it looks like it could last a couple more weeks.
Here is what we call our hillbilly sap cooker...
And our finsished product...
My wife made the sign and put the little flower on the jar...Don't blame me for that! I find it intersting how much the color of the syrup has changed throughout the season. The light colored jar is from one of our first couple of batches and since then everything has been darker. I actually like the flavor of the darker syrup more than the lighter syrup. It is a little richer with a more pronounced maple flavor to it. I'm very happy with how it has turned out.
Here is what we call our hillbilly sap cooker...
And our finsished product...
My wife made the sign and put the little flower on the jar...Don't blame me for that! I find it intersting how much the color of the syrup has changed throughout the season. The light colored jar is from one of our first couple of batches and since then everything has been darker. I actually like the flavor of the darker syrup more than the lighter syrup. It is a little richer with a more pronounced maple flavor to it. I'm very happy with how it has turned out.
Made some when I was growing up but haven't messed with it in YEARS. A couple years ago Gail and me found ourselves on the backroads of SE Indiana and stopped at an Amish house and bought some that was on the darker side and it was the best I've ever tasted. 
Just another night at work for me and Monty will be back here again bright and early. 
