Maple Syrup

The sweet, amber colored sticky substance, maple syrup. We walk out to the edge of the farm to a grove of trees. Maples interspersed with Black Ash and Oak and Birch. At the base of each Maple tree sit a couple 6 gallon white buckets connected to the tree with plastic tubing.

The tap is bored into the tree and acts as a little funnel for the clear water-like liquid to drain into the tube and eventually into the bucket.

A drop on the tongue is a cold burst of slightly sweet sugar water with a hint of earthiness. We check every bucket, a couple are completely empty, most are half full, a few are almost overflowing. The liquid is combined until we have ten full buckets of sap.

We replace the empty buckets to the trees that had the most sap flowing. 52 gallons ready to cook. Dan, our boss and lead farmer at Common Harvest Farm pieced together some of his scrap metal to makeshift an outdoor stove. Set on top is a heating pan that holds about fifteen gallons as well as a smaller prep pan.

The goal is to keep the fire burning hot so the sap boils, letting steam roll off. The level in the pan goes down. We keep adding until every bucket is empty. The color slowly changes from clear to amber as it gets closer to what we know maple syrup to be. 

To speed along the process, we occasionally stir the sap with a large metal paddle. When the pan is a quarter full, it is drained into a large kettle to be brought indoors to an electric stove. Just like making caramel, the temperature needs to be tightly controlled, the syrup can turn to hard candy in just a moment. 

Dan finished the syrup and left us a surprise jar on our table!