Maple Time 2010

Scrapbook layout of the first day of sap cooking, March 2010.

Maple Tree Knothole

Proof Positive...

that the fire burns! Every time I stick my nose outdoors (which seems quite often, for some reason ;-) I savor the sweet smoke that wafts over my yard.

It Only Takes a Spark....

To get a fire going....

Gathering Kindling

Breaking sticks for kindling...

Woodpile for the first fire...

Loading the fireplace. Ready, set, cook!

A Little Bubbly, Anyone?

Mmmmmm, sweet bubbles. Now, somebody light the fire!

Sapsicle, Anyone?

Mmmmm, frozen sap in natural popsicle form ;-) She said it was good!

Icy Sap

That sap freezes in the buckets overnight...here it's being filtered to screen debris and the ice is caught on the screen as well.

First Sap Collected!

On the left, you can see the first day's haul...20 gallons. On the right is just one tree, and you can see that the bucket is already partially full and it hadn't even started flowing yet in the morning! As it warmed up, I could see the sap dripping into the top jug all the way from in my house.

Another record maple syrup year...

I just realized that the last thing I said about maple syrup season was that there'd been a fire. Oops! Things didn't halt because of a little thing like a fire. My dad ended up with 850 gallons of sap (100 more than last year) and 15 gallons of cooked syrup. Would have been 20 gallons if he hadn't lost sap in the fire, but he was in danger of losing the sap to spoilage because he was having trouble getting it cooked fast enough, so perhaps the fire was a bit of a blessing. Anyway, everything is packed away for another year, which we are of course looking forward to, but we'll take spring, summer, and fall first, thank you very much ;-)

Fire Photos

Before picture, from maybe three weeks ago. Note the large blue storage tank...actually, there were two of them and they each held 60 gallons of sap.

After, pointing toward the side where the blue tanks were. You can see the black area extending out from the front of the cooking area. The woodpile has greatly diminished because much of it was at least partially burned, so he has finished off burning it in the cooking fire.

Charred stump that has been used as a chopping block in the past.

Trash by the road, awaiting tomorrow morning's pick-up. The blue things are obviously the storage tanks. The greenish thing between them used to be a very large trash can. The buckets are his 5 gallon pails that he used to carry the sap that he emptied out of his tap containers.

Other side of the trash pile.

The good news is that the fire is still burning and the sap is merrily boiling away. Takes a lot to shut down Poppa's Syrup Operation!

Sad news for the maple syrup operation

There was a fire at the maple syrup operation tonight. Not the fire that was supposed to be. The area around the stove burned in a small brush fire. Gone are 150 gallons of sap that were waiting to be cooked, along with the two large storage drums and a few buckets that held the sap, plus equipment, including damage to the nice big floodlights my dad used at night (I think a new cord will repair those...hopefully anyway!) I'm not sure if his woodpile burned or not. I'm at work...my poor mom was home alone when it happened. She was blaming herself until my ds7 pointed out that he's seen my dad extinguish small fires that could have gotten larger as this one did. Ironically, the boiling fire itself was fine...the sap was cooking away merrily when the fire department arrived.

Not sure at this point what my dad will do...he obviously has no storage facility now for any sap he collects. I don't know if he will rush out to replace his equipment, or call it good for the season and pull his taps. He's got a good syrup harvest even if he doesn't continue to make any more this year. He probably doesn't know at this point either...by light of day he can assess and rebuild.

God is good tho...there was no wind so the fire didn't extend toward either of our homes. No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged that can't be replaced. It happened while it was still daylight, not overnight when we were sleeping.

Spring Has Sprung!

There's lots of activity around our house these days. Here are a couple of taps. The view is down over the riverbank, so that's the frozen river below and the opposite riverbank as well.

This was what I found when I came home from work this morning. Activity, already. And children, willingly out of bed and dressed and doing things. At 7:30 in the morning!!! What is it about maple syrup time that gets them going so well, LOL?

Closer inspection revealed Poppa getting the bricks built up to seal the heat in for the hottest cooking fire...

...And K2 stacking his pile of kindling that he's been working on collecting...

...And using his new hatchet to chop bigger sticks down to useable size.

Tada, things are off to a rolling boil! The sap is flowing like crazy...last report was 40 gallons of sap collected, and he hadn't checked all of his taps (some have bigger collection containers so he doesn't check them as often)

In other news, the going rate for pine cones collected from the yard is a penny a piece. K2 picked up 119 of them today, for which I paid him and then gave them to Poppa to burn. We have a super-abundant crop and he barely made a dent in the mess!

Blog Prompts

I found the wireless generation's answer to journal prompts, thanks to what she said too! This looks like fun...might get me blogging a bit more ;-) Check out mindbump in your spare minutes, and then make sure you blog one of their prompts ;-)

suggested by Gemma Wiseman's Greyscale Territory ~ Poetic songlines

"If you were a tree, what would you be and why?"

I would without a doubt be a sugar maple tree. Just look at this gorgeous tree. Full, leafy, colorful, very shady, and best of all, it bears a sweet secret. I love maple trees all year.

In the spring...well actually starting in the winter...as the leaf buds turn red and begin to swell, my backyard becomes better than Bath & Body Works! My dad taps sugar maples all around our properties, as well as at friends' homes, and makes his own maple syrup. I wake up in the morning with my house infused with that smoky, sweet scent savored by maple syrup aficiondos. All year long, my 4-Grain Pancakes are topped with REAL syrup. Syrup finds its way into lots of other things in my kitchen...cappucino, baked goods, and even our fingers and hair ;-)

In the summer, our sugar maples (and other maples too) are leafy and provide wonderful shade. You'll find us enjoying the cool respite as we read together or have a picnic lunch.

Fall is my other favorite season, when those same maples turn gorgeous shades of red, yellow, and orange before dropping their leaves. I love fall colors, particularly those of the maple.

Winter for the maples is a time of preparation for the upcoming "active" season. Even while bare, those maples are still beautiful when they're coated with snow and ice. Their branches provide roosts for birds (including wild turkeys) and animals.

The maple tree is useful year-round. I want to be like the maple. I want to be useful, comforting, sweet, and pleasant to be around. I want people to look forward to my presence, no matter when that may be. I want to be steady and consistent for those whom I love.

A sure sign of spring!

Spring must be on its way! How do I know? Why, from reading on multiple friends' blogs, and also in the local newspaper, about all of the field trips people are taking to local Maple Syrup Events. So, I am here to declare, that we are not taking a field trip to learn how maple syrup is made, or to do sappy crafts meant to resemble something a Native American would have carried sap in (I'm sorry, but just how is a white paper-crafted bucket anything like the birch bark containers the Indians used????? And really, what fun is it to string 40 colored beads and 1 white bead in a repeated pattern to make a "40 to 1" necklace?) Lest you think that we're party poopers, or anti-syrupy people, or something like that, we're not. In fact, we only use pure maple syrup. We don't even pay an arm and a leg for it. Why????? Because hey folks, the field trip is at our house!

The sap's flowing like crazy, the wood pile is rapidly diminishing, but oh, the sweet scent of cooking syrup makes the world seem all right after all! This is my dad's project, but he of course requires the able assistance of neighbors, particularly the younger ones. His payment is the yummy whole-grain pancakes I make for him, among other things ;-)

Included in the fun on our outtings is:

• Butt sledding (when there was still snow!) down the ravine
• Actually helping to tap the trees and hang the collection buckets
• Photography of the gorgeous scenery where the tapped trees are
• Finding interesting ice patterns where the river has flooded and started to recede, and gotten frozen along the way.
• Learning that when the 5-gallon bucket of sap gets dropped on the slippery hill and spills, you've just lost 1 pint of maple syrup
• Late-night excursions to collect sap when the buckets are overflowing
• Late-night excursions to keep the fire burning
• Snuggling next to the fire
• Seeing the ISS fly overhead on a clear night
• Identifying planets and constellations on a clear night
• The annual "Breakfast by the Fire with Poppa" event
• Watching and listening as the ice in the river breaks up, and racing to the next vantage point to see & hear the ice pack pass by once again

Is it hard work? You betcha! Is it worth it? Totally! You should have seen us all twitching in anticipation of Opening Day this season ;-)

Oh, and ds5 is very excited, because TODAY they will jar the first batch of syrup, and HE gets to help!

Tapping Trees

So, what's your definition of "tapping" trees? Trees that tap dance? Or banging on a tree--you know, "tap tap tap" to see what hops out? Or...the most delicious option! Maple syrup time! DS5 and I got a giggle on Tapping Eve over the possible silly definitions of "tapping trees." And I'm sure that tonight he's a very sleepy boy because he was a very busy boy, helping Poppa with those taps. 60 taps is a lot, and 60 buckets will be a lot to gather every day, but boy oh boy, will it smell good cooking and taste good for the next year!

Is spring coming?

To hear my ds5 talk, you'd think it was! He it totally psyched about maple syrup season. Poppa hauled a load of wood today for the syrup cooking fire and that was all it took to get ds5 thinking and talking and all ready to go help tap trees whenever Poppa says it's time! That'll probably be in the next 2 weeks. We do have a couple of days coming where daytime temps will be above freezing, but then we have some colder days. It's just not quite time! Ah, I can almost smell the sweet scent of it cooking now ;-)

Savoring the scent

My yard smelled so good yesterday. The smell of my dad's maple syrup cooking over the fire wafted over the whole 3 acres (and probably beyond!), making our yard smell irresistably sweet. I could have stayed home from work just to inhale ;-)

Reminds me of 2 Corinthians 2:15 "For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish" and Psalm 119:103 "How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" and how all throught the pentateuch, it is stated repeatedly that the sacrifices made to God had "a sweet savour." Now while I don't believe He intends us to now kill animals and burn them up in His name, I do see that the things we do to show our love for Him definitely are pleasant to Him, just as the syrup fire had a most pleasant scent that overspread the neighborhood yesterday.

You know it's almost spring when...

Spring fever hits! It's been ccccold but sunny and it just looks so inviting outdoors, at least until your nose gets red as you step out the door ;-)



This week held the annual leaving of the ice. A river borders our property, tho we're on a high bank and don't have a direct view of it unless it floods onto the woods on the other side. Anyway, Wednesday morning when I got home from work, dd9 met me, excited that the ice was going out. Well, actually it wasn't, quite yet. It as jammed up on a few bends and waiting to break free. Looked like it got pretty thick, probably a good 6-8" (which is good, if you knew the geography of "our" river ;-) About 1/2 hr after I went to bed, they said it creaked and groaned and cracked and it all broke free. My dad and the kids were eating their breakfast outside by the maple syrup cooking fire. (This is last year's picture.)

So they left their breakfast and watched the ice, and then ran over to the neighbor's and watched the same ice floe pass in front of their house, then came back to cold waffles ;-) Hey, whatever, they were having fun, right? And I love their little "traditions" with Poppa--eating breakfast by the fire, getting excited over the ice going out of the river, helping with sap collection, and just all of those fun things that we love to drop school and run out to do.