Maple Syrup Making

When we were in Minnesota the end of March, we were able to catch the annual Maple Tree tapping day at on of the parks around the St Paul area. We went trapezing through the woods, searching for the maple trees that had not been tapped yet, which were pretty few and far between. It turned out that we were in the wrong area of the woods, and that the guide we had wasn't real sure what she was doing..... but we still were able to tap the tree (above)

and everyone was rather content to watch the whole process.....

except for Savannah..... she just wanted to pick up sticks and carry them around..... play in the leaves, and just collect random stuff...... and just in general not pay attention one bit.... or so I thought.

Then we poured the sap we found (we tapped two trees, and then collected sap from the other established taps) and took it to the syrup shack. They used large trashcans and a window screen to filter the sap.


From the trashcan, the workers would then pour the sap into a large bathtub sized pan on top of the wood stove.... Where it would boil the sap down for 24 hours, and reduce it by at least half.... then it would go to an indoor kitchen for more refining...

I didn't think the majority of the time that Savannah was paying attention at all. If you ask her though maple syrup is collected from the trees, and you fire it..... (you know cause it was misbehaving on the job.... hehehe.)

Later that day, at Uncle Mike's house, we found a maple tree in his backyard that had been trimmed the previous fall. The tree trimmer had not sealed the cut, it the tree was POURing sap out if it. Uncle Mike collected a couple of gallons and did the refining process. It actually worked.... till they spilled it.