Sap's Running Once Again

     Friday, the weather turned from cloudy, misty to cold and windy.  The trees hardly dripped at all!  On Saturday we woke to a dusting of snow which was very pretty.  By noon, it was all melted away.  It was once again very cold and windy.  Clear blue skies.  I don't think it made it out of the thirties.  The trees didn't give forth one drop of sap.
     This morning I wanted to check to see if any of the sugar maples down by the creek were running at all.  Normally, I would have just waited till late afternoon and brought my collection bucket.  Good thing I checked!  The wind had blown two of the jugs off of the trees and there was the sap - drip, drip, dripping onto the ground. 
     At around three this afternoon I collected about three gallons of sap which is now boiling away on the stove.  I'm going to have to add the syrup that sugared to it once it boils down.  This will reconsitute the sugar crystals into syrup.  I think tomorrow will be a good day for sap to run.  It's supposed to go below freezing tonight, then sunny and 50 F tomorrow.

Slow day for Sap and Sugar Crystals in the Jar

     It did not go down to freezing last night.  Today hung in the high forties with a misty rain.  Very slow sap day.  I maybe got a quart of sap from six trees.  No matter, boiled it down anyways and added yesterdays partially boiled down three gallon take to it.  I netted about a cup of syrup.

     However, and this disturbs me, there is a lot of maple sugar at the bottom of the second quart jar I have.  I thought it was just minerals that precipitated out, but when I took the jar out of the refrigerator and took a good look at it, I realized it was sugar!  Not a disaster, mind you, sugar can be reconstituted into syrup.  But I just don't know where I went wrong.  Maybe boiled it a tad too long. 
     Professionals and people who rely on what pros say and do, take the temperature of the syrup as it boils.  When it hits 219 F degrees, it is taken off the stove.  I have tried using a candy thermometer, but find that it is hard for me to read.  The steam gets on the glass and as soon as I take it out so that I can read it, the temp starts to drop so I don't get a true reading.  Also, when there is only an inch of syrup in the bottom of the pan it's hard to keep the bottom of the thermometer off the metal.  This is why I have been relying on the bubble method of telling when it is ready as well as relying on when looks like syrup, feels like syrup (on my tongue,) smells like syrup, and tastes likes syrup - then it is a duck!  Just kidding.  Therefore, it must be syrup.
     I'll reconstitute the sugar this weekend.  So far, the first quart looks fine.  It's a nice amber color. Nice and clear.  Minerals at the bottom of the jar.
     We have a cold front coming in tonight.  I'm curious to see how the trees will react to this.  I really like my trees.   

Sugar Time!

     It's SUGAR TIME!

     This winter in central Pennsylvania has been unseasonably warm.  I wondered if I should have tapped the maple trees in January.  We had many days when the daytime hit over 50 and it went down to freezing at night.  That's prime maple tapping weather.  But I looked on the Internet to see if tapping trees in January was wise.  Normally we don't tap till mid February in Pennsylvania.  I found some information that made me put off tapping the trees.  What I found said that if we would have a cold spell trees tapped too early might start to heal over.  I didn't know if that was true or not.  A lot of stuff on the net is not.  But some is.  So I held off.  Just the same, yesterday our local paper ran an article about a man who said this was a banner year for sugar - maple sugar.  He started tapping in January.  I slapped down the paper and headed outside - drill in hand.  Tapware lined up.

     To tap a tree I use a hand drill with a 1/2" bit.  I drill into the maple tree about 3 feet up from the ground and at a slight upward angle.  This is so that the sap that runs out will run down.  I drill in about two inches.  I have some bonfide metal maple taps and a few plumbers' elbows from the hardware store.  Either type works.  Drill the hole and hammer in the tap. From the hardware store I have some plastic tubing that is then fit over the end of each tap.  This is directed into the empty water jug (a plastic gallon jug) that has been affixed to the tree with a nail and some pipe cleaner.  Twist ties will work but make sure they're sturdy.  A gallon of sap weighs a lot.
     I didn't think sap would run much today.  We had a cold snap.  But sure enough today I gathered up a gallon of sap from two maple trees.  One is a large sugar maple and the other is a red maple.  Any kind of maple tree will deliver sap but some types have more sugar than others. On the other hand, some of the maple trees bud later than others, so I guess it works out even in the end for how much syrup you get.
     The gallon of sap will only make a little bit of syrup.  So here's how I keep up with it.  I boiled the sap on the stove top while cooking dinner.  It took about two hours to boil down o where it had just started to take on a slight amber color.  The bubbles were also smaller than a full boil water bubble.  I let it cool.  Poured it off into a quart Mason jar, put a lid on it and stuck it in the refrigerator.  Tomorrow, I'll do the same.