Maple Syrup Season

Maple syrup season is one of our favorite times of the year. Our family works together to make this all happen. Tapping trees, gathering sap, and boiling sap down to maple syrup is all done by the careful hands of the people in our family.

The Maple Syrup Season

Our Maple Syrup Season usually lasts from February to April. The season begins with tapping trees and ends when the last sap has been boiled and the sugar house is all cleaned up. A lot of work goes into each part of the process, but it is something that everyone enjoys.

The weather plays a huge role in how long a Maple Syrup Season can last. To have ideal maple syrup weather, you need warmer days that are above freezing but still below 55 degrees. Nights should be cold and below freezing to have the perfect temperatures for tapping trees and boiling sap.

I shared in a previous post about how we tap our maple trees. We always hope for the best and expect the worst each season. We have had seasons that have last 2 weeks and some that have lasted 6 weeks.

Boiling Sap

If you ask my husband, the best part about Maple Syrup Season is boiling sap. Getting the sap from the trees into the sugar house is a process. First, you have to start in the sugarbush. After the trees have been tapped, the sap flows from the trees into the main line. The main line dumps the sap into a large metal tank. We have multiple metal tanks on our property that the sap gets gathered into.

The kids always look forward to this next part – gathering sap. We gather the sap from the tanks and put it into 275-gallon totes that we haul back to our property with a truck or a tractor. Gathering sap and checking tanks is always an adventure. You never know how much sap is going to be in the tanks.

Once the sap is gathered it then goes into another holding tank outside the sugar house. We then pump the sap from the outside tanks into a tank inside the sugar house that will run into the evaporator.

The Finished Product

We use wood to heat our evaporator. Someone has to constantly feed the fire to keep the sap at a rolling boil. Once the sap reaches that perfect temperature of 7 degrees above boiling, it is time to take it off the heat. We have an automatic shut off valve that will pull the done syrup off the evaporator. Once it is taken off, we run it through a filter press to remove any remaining dirt.

After the syrup has been filtered it goes into a canner where it is heated to 180 degrees. Once the syrup is hot enough, we can it or put it into our stainless-steel drums. The canned syrup is the stuff we use to eat or sell. This year we made around 150 gallons of syrup. We kept around 30 gallons for ourselves for eating and to sell. Our syrup goes into jars or plastic jugs that we purchase from a maple syrup supplier.

The syrup that goes into the stainless-steel drums is taken to a sale in May at our local maple sugar equipment dealer. They will purchase the syrup by the pound and grade and used for other purposes.

We use maple syrup for everything, and I mean everything. It replaces sugar in some recipes, I use it in my coffee, and we love to eat it on pancakes, ice cream, and waffles. You can use maple syrup on biscuits or in recipes. I would love to hear in the comments below your favorite way to use maple syrup.