Making Maple Syrup
We’ve started on our first adventure here on the farm… I mean, outside of chickens. I’ve prayed for so long to have maple trees I could tap to make syrup, so my excitement was huge when I realized that our property is almost entirely maples upfront and a heavy population of them in the back.
We didn’t have time to identify all of the maples in the woods before the leaves fell, but I knew we had plenty to get us started. These beautiful trees in the front yard have been great producers, and from the previous tap hole scars, the old owners must have thought so too.
Upfront we tapped five trees, and I’m not sure how many in the back, but we have over 30 taps this year. It’s been such an adventure learning this process from start to finish! I’m excited to share more about it with you.
The first thing that I will say is that this isn’t hard work, it’s just patient, consistent work. If you have a maple tree in your yard that you’ve always been curious about, you could definitely do it with minimal cost. However, your time will be necessary.
We chose not to boil our syrup inside after hearing horror stories of the amount of steam that comes off the sap. The sap is mostly water with a little bit of sugar. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. So you’ll have a lot of moisture in your home if you choose to boil in there. However, there are easy and inexpensive, but effective options for an outside evaporator. We chose the cinder block option and it cost us roughly $30. We have access to a lot of wood to burn though, so this was our best option. Since we already pay for propane in our house (ouch), we chose to burn wood here.
Tapping is really pretty simple. You need a spile, some tubing, and a bucket. Or you could go the bag route and keep it pretty simple. Never drill more than 2 1/2” into the tree. The sap runs great when the temps hit 40+ and go back to freezing at night. So be ready! The sap also does not stay good for a long time, but keeping it cold will help tremendously in extending your time before it spoils.
Boiling just takes time. There are definitely systems that will boil faster, and we’ve learned that sealing up the cracks to keep the heat in helps a lot. Adding sap as you go until you’re condensed down to about a gallon or two to bring it inside to finish it has been effective for us. Takes a bit longer to finish it inside. Hopefully, we’ll boil it down a little further next week to save time and propane, but the ability to control the temp inside is really helpful for perfection.
So, I started writing the above last week before we hit the big sap run. I’m assuming that’s this week since we’ve collected over 100 gallons in two days. We’re noobs, guys. We’re working on a better process to boil it down faster next year, this year, we’re working to survive the run and make the most syrup that we can! I’ll update you when this season is over with our actual numbers.
If you have sugar maples or any maples in your yard, I encourage you to consider tapping them and giving it a go! It’s really quite simple and super rewarding. I’ll link some of the tools we found most useful for you below. Otherwise, grab yourself some syrup from our shop and support small, local farms.