Seasonal Food from Eating with Bev: How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole

Seasonal Food from Eating with Bev: How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole:       The daytime temperature has climbed into the 70's and the nighttime temperatures are now hanging in the 50's. It's unseasonably warm ...

How to Seal a Maple Tree Tap Hole



     The daytime temperature has climbed into the 70's and the nighttime temperatures are now hanging in the 50's. It's unseasonably warm and this weather will stay with us for the next couple weeks - maybe longer! All of our maple trees have budded and they are no longer dripping sap. They are busy growing out their leaves now. It is important to seal the holes that were drilled into the trees otherwise bugs and disease can get into the tree and kill it. We can't let that happen.

     The best way to close up a tap hole in a maple tree is to find a maple twig that is about the same size as the hole drilled. You could run to the hardware store and get a bunch of dowel rods to cut up, but twigs are nature's dowels and they are conveniently located right near the tree's that you've tapped! Cut off a piece of twig about four inches long and pound it into the hole. Remember, the hole was drilled about 2" deep so about 2" of twig will poke out. If you find that the twig you cut is too thin (loose) use a piece from further up the twig branch. Nature provides us with tapered twigs, so soon enough you'll find a piece that fits snuggly. It can be somewhat forced into the tap hole by using a hammer. If it's too big, just find another piece or try turning it around.
     Because I use a nail in the tree on which to hang the jug, I also plug the nail hole with a small piece of twig. The tree will heal over and next year you'll find that the tap hole is sealed. You won't be able to remove the twig that was used to seal the hole. Nature is marvelous. Your trees will thank you for treating them well and with consideration. Next year, just find a different spot to drill.

     One way to tell if a tree is ready to be sealed is to look at the color of the sap in the jug. This is also one reason why I prefer to use plastic water jugs for home tapping. It's much easier to see #1 how much sap you got and also if it's clear or starting to turn dark amber in color. Once it turns dark amber there won't be as much sugar in the sap and it will not taste very good. It will taste woody or "buddy."

     The old meat grinder raised some eyebrows today when I took it out to Hilsher's General Store for advice. One, I needed to get a set of the right size stuffing tubes so to make sausages at some point and two, I wanted to get the blades sharpened or replaced.
     Dick Hilsher saw me wandering around the store carrying this heavier-than-lead meat grinder and asked if I needed help. He is usually there and is very helpful answering questions and finding you the right parts to get most projects underway.
     "Hm! Do you know what you have here?" Well, an old meat grinder. He asked me how long I'd had it and I said, "Couple days." Then he pointed to the patent date on it - 1909 - and told me all about the company in that used to make such meat grinders. Landers, Frary and Clark out of New Britain, Connecticut. It's a nice heavy duty Universal Meat Chopper. Cast iron. Still works but needed some attention.
     He brought me over to the display case of grinding blades and parts. "It's locked," he said. "The only thing around here that I do lock up." The blades were not cheap but not horribly expensive either. He had me feel a new blade and compare it to the feel of the blade on my meat grinder. There was a noticeable difference in sharpness. I would have bought a new set of blades - cutter which looks like a small propeller and grinding plate - a disk full of holes - but because my meat grinder is so old, the "square" hole of the new ones would not fit on the "rectangular" shaft of my old one.
     So we sent both blade and grinding plate off to the shop to be sharpened. He said when they get back they should be sharp enough to last me the rest of my life. (I'm not sure how much longer that will be, but it's good to know.)
    
     On Saturday Greg and I went up to Lewisburg, PA to the Dale Walker Engle House to see a demonstration on how to make sausage. They had a guy up there showing how to make maple syrup as well, but I pretty much know how to do that. The sausage demonstration was worthwhile. I got to ask lots of questions and as well learned how to do it.
     Questions: What's that gadget? That's the thing that keeps the auger centered when the blade is taken off and the sausage tubes added. Why do they say on the Internet to soak the casings in water? To make the stuffing go through more easily. Why do they say on the Internet to let the sausages rest for a day? To help set the filling. Should I use soy flour in the mix? Only for bologna. Where did those casings come from? A pig. What about for smaller link sausages, like breakfast sausage? A lamb. How about...? A steer. I didn't ask him if I could recycle gut fiddle strings for casings. That might have been out of his range of knowledge.
They added a mix of salt and pepper - about a 1 to 1 ratio and I'd guess about a 1/2 cup of each to about 10 pounds of meat. He said to only use good grade pork for pork sausage, a decent shoulder.
    
     While at Hilsher's I picked up a pound or so of spring onion sets and a package of Snow Pea seeds. It's that time of year. Yesterday I realized that the little green plants in the cold frame I'd set up in the fall are not lettuce plants, but weeds. I'll be replanting lettuce seeds today and try to get some chicken manure from the coop onto the garden. Tomorrow I'll be planting onions.
     They always say around here to get your peas planted by St. Patrick's Day which is this Saturday. Twenty years ago I used to try to do that but March would be so cold and snowy as well as the first half of April that the seeds would just rot. So we'd replant. Then May would get so warm that that the plants would be over before they started. Never any success with planting peas by St. Pat's Day. However, because of the mild weather we've been having I'm going to try it again this year - one more time - and see what happens.
     The grinding blades should be back in about two weeks. Just in time for Easter. Just in time for fresh kielbasa - I hope.

Sausages, Sap and Beer!



     Busy day yesterday. As I promised when I began this Blog I intend to write about moving through the seasons and the food of those seasons. Though it's not over yet, we are beginning to move out of maple sugar season now and into spring, albeit, slowly.
     Maple season moves us toward Easter. One of my favorite meals is the Easter family dinner. As part of our Easter tradition we usually take a trip out to Shamokin, PA where we drive by our late grandparents' old house, late aunts’ houses and finish the day by stopping into Shaw’s Meat and Deli Market. We buy kielbasa there - about twenty pounds, enough to last us for Easter dinner and the rest of the year. We would also buy City Chicken there. This is chunks of veal and pork on a skewer that you bring home, then bread and fry like chicken. We’d also buy Soupis - a hard Italian salami. This was our eastern European meat for the year, some of which we gobbled up right away, some for special dinners and some for freezing and to save for later.
     The floods of 2011 hit Shamokin, PA and the rest of central Pennsylvania pretty hard. Bad news! Shaw’s couldn’t recover their losses and closed down. Bummer! Now - where to get good kielbasa?
     I decided I would try my hand at making our own. So yesterday I went out to the Kramer Flea Market in search of a hand meat grinder with a sausage tube attachment. One of the dealers there had about a dozen hanging on the wall but when I asked the prices he started in with a song and dance about how this was hog butchering time and everybody wanted one (I doubted that because I was the only one looking at them for a good hour although the market was very busy)  When I asked him the prices on a few, he started in with another song and dance about how they were "antiques and collectable."  Since I don't necessarily want to collect meat grinders, I just want one that works, I thanked him nicely and went down to the Firehouse Flea Market in Selinsgrove. I got a decent one for $15.00, the first in my 'collection.'     Mrs. Stolfus, who takes the money at the flea market, said if I go out to Stauffer’s Meat Market (out in the hills) they’d have casings and that Hilscher’s Ace Hardware Store (deals with the farmers and Amish, etc) would have proper sausage tube attachments and anything else I needed to make sausage - kielbasa!         
     Stauffer’s makes really good cracklings and if you’re lucky and get there early on a Tuesday when they render the lard, you can get a decent sized block for $2.00. So I will, probably next week.
     So now I have a meat grinder that needs to be cleaned sitting on the kitchen table. James, our son, is home this week from NYC and I took advantage of his good and helpful nature to help me get some beer started. We make out own beer on account of James having taken up the hobby while he was in college at the school right down the road. Once you start making your own beer you get spoiled. Store bought just never quite cuts it when you can tweak a recipe to your own individual taste buds.

     A family favorite is the Shakemantle Ginger Ale recipe from BEER CAPTURED a book by Tess and Mark Szamatulski. It takes about seven weeks start to finish to make beer. We’ve done this many times now and if we get the ginger beer started now, it will be ready for just about the time to start mowing the lawn again.

     So beer boiled on the stove for a good part of the afternoon, till it was time to pour it - all five gallons - yes, you heard me right - all five gallons! into the primary fermenter. Then I went down to the creek to collect the maple sap.
     The day’s take was low, about a gallon, but that boiled down and added into the previous days’ take gave us about a pint. Today, however, was great! A good three gallons of sap. Last night went to below freezing and today up to 60F. Excellent sap drip weather. I think next week will be the end of it here for us, but so far I have just shy of a gallon of maple syrup in the refrigerator.

     I’m hoping to make the sausages using some of the venison from the deer I got in the fall. For James’ birthday dinner we had a fine, rolled rump roast of venison, marinated for several days in Merlot wine, garlic and herbs. I would tell about how I got that buck in this post, but spring is not the time to tell about how you got your buck. But as I think, just over the horizon of maple sugar season, and Easter kielbasa season, and ginger beer season is Spring Gobbler season. Let’s hope I have story to tell about that!



Budded or Not - When to Stop Tapping Maple Trees

     This year, 2012, has been unseasonably warm for winter.  It's almost time to stop tapping the maple trees though there may be another week left from the looks of the weather.  I could kick myself around the proverbial block for not setting the taps in the trees in January.  January was ideal sugar weather - days in the fifties and night in the twenties.  I did not tap the trees, however, because there was always the risk that our winter here in the Northeast U.S. would have finally come in full force.  The trees might have stopped running and the taps holes might have started to heal over.  So I waited until mid Frebruary, the time we usually tap trees in Pennsylvania.
     So far I have three quarts of maple syrup in the refrigerator.  It will keep for a year or more if refrigerated.  We don't usually have to think about that too much, though, becauese we use it up.
     We have several varieties of maples trees on our property - some better than others for syrup, but they all drip sap and all that sap is good when boiled down.  Unfortunately, I haven't really paid attention to the types of trees we have.  This summer when the leaves are on, I'll come back and edit this post with the names of the types of maples we have.  But here is what I know on observation for how they give sap, when they bud and when it is time to pull the taps and plug the holes.

This tree on the right hand side of this article, sits in the front corner of our yard.  It's always the first to bud.  It actually started looking "nervous" in January but it always gives the sweetest sap - tastes sweet right out of the tree - so I tapped it anyway.  By March 1, 2012, the buds had started to open.  I had pulled the taps the week before.  Also, the sap it put forth was taking on an amberish tint.  When that happens I always pull the taps.  The syrup would not taste sweet then.  It would taste woody or "buddy" as the pros call it.
     The tree branch pictured at the left has just started showing some buds.  It's dripping very slowly now.  It gives a decent sap, not so sweet as the front yard tree, the one that buds early, but earlier than the trees down by the creek.  It's still running clear sap, but had slowed down considerably.  I'll probably pull the tap on this one tomorrow.

     The trees down by the creek are still dripping sap and have not budded, nor do they show signs of budding yet.  These may hold out for the rest of the week.  We still have days in the fifties predicted with cold nights.  I might be able to get another quart out of them.
     This year would have been a banner year for syrup had I tapped in January.  I feel like the calander is slipping sideways.  Maybe it's better just to stand outside, feel the air and the sun, and be more instinctive about tapping trees than to watch the calendar these days.
     Anyways, I'll be boiling some sap down tonight - I just don't know how much.

    

Moonshine Maple Rum - Is It Worth The Effort?

     Because of the circles I travel in it has come to my attention that it is possible to make Rum, and alcoholic beverage, from maple syrup. There is a person whom I have heard of, who happens to make moonshine on occasion, actually on many occasions. He’s very good at it.

     He’s put a great deal of time and effort into his craft. He studies books and has a fine aptitude for math as well as for making machines - things that do things.

     After the experience of making some really good moonshine whiskey using a variety of different edibles, he spent one late winter tapping trees to make maple syrup. He had great success making syrup so the following winter he moved on to try his hand at making Rum. Whiskey, the most common form of moonshine, is made from grain. Rum is the alcoholic beverage that is made from sugar. Maple syrup is a sugar. So he made Rum.

     It takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. He used two gallons of syrup for his Rum run. That means he had to collect 80 gallons of sap from the trees around his hollow. I know for a fact that last winter was a rough one here and there were many days he couldn’t get up the mountain to collect sap from his taps. But he got enough.
     He used two 6 gallon fermenting buckets and dumped a gallon of syrup into each bucket. To each bucket he added 4 gallons of raw sap. Normally, if using a grain mash, plain water would have been added. Sap is mostly water but he wanted to make sure he retained the flavor of the maple for his Rum. So this is what he did.

     Mind you, he had to boil down those 80 gallons of sap to make the two gallons of syrup. This man is driven when he’s onto an idea. Into each bucket of “wash” he tossed a bread yeast specifically made for fermenting. Then he capped the buckets and let the wash do it’s thing - ferment. After it was sufficiently fermented and the alcohol had been created, he ran it through his still.
     He netted 2 liters of 160 proof Rum. Rum that strong would burn your insides out, so this high proof result is generally cut with water to make it drinkable and pleasant. He cut it down to about 90 proof, pretty much what you buy in a bottle of Rum from the liquor store.
He doesn’t have any wooden casks in which to age his moonshine products. Instead, he chars small chunks of wood from the trees from his own land and he adds some of this to the alcohol. He charred maple wood with his propane torch and added these to the bottles of Rum. He let it age for a month or two before removing them.
     So would he do this again? Was it worth it? Although the Rum was tasty, in his opinion it didn’t quite have the maple taste that he thought it would have. There is a really specific taste to maple syrup that is almost poetic. It’s hard to describe - woody, fruity with a hint of vanilla - a one of a kind flavor. He did add some maple syrup to one bottle which technically made that a “cordial,” not a Rum. It was still good. He said he took two bottles to a party and they were drained in a flash.
     There was a lot of work involved in making the maple Rum from the ground up so to say but the final result could have been attained by just adding some good strong maple syrup or maple extract to grain alcohol for maple taste with a kick. As well as I can tell, he’s decided to continue making moonshine, but with grains or fruits, not sap. He’ll save the syrup for pancakes.