Maple syrup time again!

Yea man I boiled down my first pint last night. You guys in southern PA are probably past the prime but here on the hill it's just getting started flowing. Anyone make their own syrup? Post a picture if you have a cool setup, mine is just boring buckets on the trees and then I boil it inside in a spaghetti pot a pint a night.

A guy I work with has been selling syrup for the past couple of weeks, they have done 85 gallons so far!! Really , really good!

We stopped up to Maple Tree Inn in Angelica, NY for some good buckwheat pancakes (all you can eat!) and pure maple syrup! They are only open 3 months from Feb-April for the syrup time!

As long as it's freezing at night and above freezing during the day the sap will flow. Where I live unfortunately it doesn't warm up above freezing until about 5pm so the holes just freeze up if I try to tap early. Down in the village where there are parking lots and lots of houses and other heat absorbing/wind blocking things it warms up much faster this time of year. 85 gallons, holy smokes!

Made 3 or 4 gallons here in KY a few years ago, don't have the amount of maple trees you guys do, but it was fun and oh so delicious!

BK

Hey EA what a pint of home grown go for? I lkive on Maple drive but nobody here has any buckets out. Down in town where its cool to be ecofriendly and unique I see buckets lining the trees in front of a few mansions but thats it. Ill try anything once though where do you get the spigots? Jim

One of my neighbors in North east Connecticut says he "had a pretty good year". He made almost 140 gallons of syrup this year, last year the weather wasn't very good and he made only about 50 gallons.

I watched him work and boy, that is a lot of work. No wonder that the price of syrup is so high.

His season is just ending and he started to pull his taps.

Maple syrup on vanilla ice cream. Hot milk with maple syrup beats hot chocolate any day. Vodka with maple syrup for an after dinner drink.

Nothing is like your own maple syrup! Haven't made it in a long time. Today I bought a gallon. Wasn't going to but the guy says try this and hands over a little plastic cupfull. I didn't feel guilty giving him $40. Made in America. Wonder if he could use coal to boil it down? Scott

My grand plan is to use coal to boil it down, but due to lack of planning I boil it in my kitchen. An ideal setup would be an old hand fired flat-top square stove, cut out a hole in the top and set a stainless steel evaporator pan in there. I have a pot belly coal stove outside that I burn paper in for compost but I can't seem to figure out an evaporator setup to fit it that fits my budget. Sprague's in Portville NY sells everything, the spliles (taps) buckets, evaporators, lines, jugs, you name it. I got some spiles from a relative and I use milk jugs to collect the sap. It is the free method. I will probably buy some real metal buckets just because I like how they look better than a milk jug, they are $3 each so I figure a $30 investment isn't too bad. With 10 spiles I can tap 3 large trees and get 15-20 gallons of sap a day, enough for about a quart of syrup, and have one left over to hang from a telephone pole. The city people really like that! The going price of syrup is about $40 a gallon, maybe more this year with everything else going up. I will probably only make 4 or 5 quarts unless I get some type of outdoor wood or coal fired evaporator going, it is pretty senseless to spend $5 worth of propane to make $5 worth of syrup but the kid's are learning something. I store the syrup in regular canning jars, it's easy and cheaper than the fancy jugs. Friends and neighbors get free syrup when they stay for breakfast