Well, I did say I would come back and finish the tale of our maple syrup making.  We had a wonderful year for our small family operation.  We made 5 gallons of syrup, which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough for our family to use with some left over to give away.

Here’s how we finish the project.  Once the sap is running, we pour the buckets into clean plastic garbage cans.  These are wash prior to using with a non-toxic cleaner and of course rinsed well. 

Then the sap is poured into a stainless steel pan and boiled over a wood fire for hours.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  Once the sap is cooked down outside, we pour it through wool felt and paper filters.  It’s then brought inside to finish to the final syrup stage. 

We can the syrup in canning jars and we’re done.

You might ask why we go to all this trouble to make just 5 gallons of syrup.  The whole process is something that connects us to our land and to each other.  While we love maple syrup, we could buy it in a store.  Somehow, producing your own food makes it more precious.  And we will always cherish the memories of syrup making with the many people we’ve shared this with.  It just makes the syrup that much sweeter.