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.

Pancake Tuesday!

     Some call it Mardi Gras, Some call it Fat Tuesday, some call it Fasnacht, but at home in upstate New York, when I was a kid we called it Pancake Tuesday.  As part of a Lenten tradition the day before Ash Wednesday was a day of feasting.  It was also the day we got to have breakfast for supper!  Pancakes!  Sometimes with sausages; sometimes with bacon.
     As the mother of seven kids, Mom spent a lot of time at the stove that evening flipping pancakes while we sat at the kitchen table and gobbled them up.  Butter.  Sour cream in big globs.  And Maple syrup poured in great streams onto pancake after pancake.  We were hungry kids!
     My Dad tapped our great big maple tree - the one in the backyard, the oldest tree in town - and netted just enough maple syrup for our feast.  He would stay up all night while it boiled to a syrup on our kitchen stove.  Our windows would be covered in steam.  The cupboard doors would warp and the ceiling tiles would arch.  So what?  It was sugar time!
     It occurs to me that one of the reasons why the people of upstate New York call Shrove Tuesday, "Pancake Tuesday," is because that is the season of maple syrup - sugar! - and a most welcome feast for the people of the north country who still have a ways to go before spring.

Here's my recipe for homemade pancakes (I never use a mix - not even Bisquik)
1 C flour
3 T fat of some sort (Lard, butter, oil...)
3 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 fresh egg from a happy chicken
1 C milk.
Blend flour, baking powder and salt.  Cut in fat.  Add egg and milk.  Stir but not too much.  You want it lumpy.  Fry in a fairly hot frying pan that has been greased with fat (I use bacon drippings)

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.