The Latest Craft Project: Maple Syrup

One of Jason's favorite economy bloggers lives in New Hampshire and started tappng his maple trees and making maple syrup a couple of years ago.  Jason (who hopes someday we have a house in the woods of New Hampshire or Vermont, or, really, even southern Massachusetts) thought this was the coolest thing ever.  He forwarded me links to the maple syrup blogs and I read them with interest.

So we have this huge maple tree in our backyard.  The maple is probably at least 50 years old. It has fiery orange-red leaves in the Autumn and Jason suspected it was a sugar maple.  As the weather got colder and we couldn't go to the beach anymore, he started researching tapping the maple tree and determined that we could put 2, possibly 3 taps into our big tree.  Because Jason always needs a project.

It takes the right kind of weather for the sap to flow.  Basically, you need it to get below freezing at night, and above freezing during the day, which means that mid to late February here in Rhode Island is a good time to start.

The day after Winter Storm Nemo, Jason got started.

(Btw, this is my favorite)

The day after the blizzard was actually pretty warm and sunny (relatively speaking), and the coming week's forecast was for 40 degree days and 20 degree (and colder) nights.  Perfect!

First, Jason drilled a small hole in our tree and inserted a tap (which he had already ordered special to be prepared for the perfect day).  Then he attached some tubing.

Then he tapped in the 2nd tap.

And attached the tubing, and snaked the tubing into 2 gallon jugs we had saved.  The sap immediately started flowing.

This was the first day's haul.  1 gallon, plus a little bit in a 2nd gallon.

We tasted it.  Well, Jason tasted it, and after assuring me it was fine, I tasted it.  Turns out maple sap tastes like slightly sweet water.  Not so bad.

Then, THEN the sap really started flowing.  Jason brought home a 7 gallon bucket from work and while we were gone for a couple of days, the bucket overflowed!  So he brought home 2 more buckets.  As of last Friday night, he had collected around 24 gallons of sap and decided to try boiling it into syrup.  Usually sap cooks down at around the rate of 40 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup.

Jason used my large roasting pan and 2 stock pots for the boiling.

Boil, boil, boil.

We figured it would costs us a lot in natural gas, but that this would be a fun experiment and worth a higher utility bill.  Jason checked the gas meter during the boil and turns out, we probably spent $4 or $5 total.  Not too bad for the amount of syrup we got.  Real maple syrup is expensive!

Ideally we would be doing this over a wood fire with a fancy evaporator and such.  And we would have a 20-acre farm.  But we work with what we have.

Jason monitored his sap closely and topped it off periodically.  We had a few taste tests along the way and marveled how the taste gradually took on the familiar maple flavor, and started turning a pretty golden color.

14 hours later, the syrup was ready to bottle.

We wound up with 90 ounces of  syrup!

That's more than we were expecting.  We have a grading sampler that we bought in Vermont a few months ago that shows examples of the 4 grades of maple syrup: Fancy, Medium Grade A, Dark Grade A, and Grade B.  Our syrup is closest to Fancy, but just a little darker.  Turns out, the earlier in the season, the more sugar in the sap.  And the more sugar in the sap, the lighter the syrup because you don't have to boil it down as far to get the final syrup.  I'm really excited to see how it changes as the season progresses over the next month or so.

Not only does it look pretty, but it tastes so, SO good.  Really yummy.

I mentioned on Facebook today that after our successful syrup, we might be in the market for a sugar bush in Vermont or New Hampshire.  I might not have been completely kidding...

Knits

This blog is kind of becoming my "show everyone who isn't on Ravelry what I've knitted lately" blog.  But this morning a friend of mine sent me an adorable picture of her daughter in the sweater I knitted, so I just have to share:

Adorable, right?  I also made her a little hat.  This is a yarn called Paton's Beehive Chunky and it is a super soft acrylic.  After making this sweater, I stocked up the next time Jo-Ann had a sale.  It is SO soft! 

(Since I have my own wool allergies, I usually make baby stuff out of acrylic just in case baby is allergic too.  That way my hands don't itch, and neither does baby.)

I made this sweater over Christmas for one of my counselors in Young Womens. 

The gauge on this is pretty small (size 4 needles, for the knitters).  Usually I shy away from finer knitwork because I just don't have the patience for it, but we watched a lot of movies with my parents over the holidays and it was the perfect time to knit something more time-intensive.

Finally, I whipped up this little cowl for myself after going for a walk with a friend on a cold and blustery day.  I commented that I would love to have a cowl because my neck was cold, but I didn't want to go all out with a scarf.  She knits as well and said, "You could knit one up today!"

She was right.