The good news was that when we checked our maple sap pails, they only had a bit of ice and were full. The bad news was that we had nearly 18 gallons of sap to boil from our 6 trees. It takes roughly 40 gallons of tree sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup. That means you have to somehow remove 39 gallons of water. Large operations have adopted reverse osmosis methods for some of that water removal, but most producers, large and small, rely on fire to boil the sap and evaporate the water.
Fortunately for us, we have a rather large, but disorganized, pile of wood. We had some trees taken down last year, and our farmer and a friend hauled the logs away for lumber. They cleaned up all of the branches by placing them into a single large pile, and graded the area. The farmer also brought us an old tractor rim that we plan to use for a fire pit. This has been the center of my maple syrup operations.
Just like last week, I got a fire going around 8AM, and started boiling around 9AM. My method is pretty inefficient - just a pan balanced on two cinder blocks. I follow a Wisconsin maple syrup producers Facebook group, and it is fun to see all of the ideas people use to boil sap. There are converted oil tanks, drum stoves, and even a converted metal file cabinet. This is just an experiment for us, so we are starting with a pan and a fire pit.
The problem is that my pan probably boils off about 2 to 3 gallons of water an hour. That sounds like a lot until you are staring at 18 gallons of sap, do the math, and realize that is 6 to 9 hours of boiling. Saturday was such a warm day that the trees produced another 5 gallons of sap as I boiled the first 18 gallons. I gathered that as well, giving me well over 20 gallons of sap. The fire has to be constantly tended to keep things boiling, and you have to slowly add more sap as the water level decreases. The Facebook page this weekend had many posts of all-nighters from maple syrup hobbyists and professionals. I felt like I should be drinking a beer while doing this, but I just can't drink that much beer anymore!
I finished the initial boil around 5:30PM. The next step was to boil that last 3/4 of a gallon or so down to syrup. I did that on a camp stove to have better control. Around 6PM I was a bit shocked to see the sun setting and the moon rising over our barn. I finished up with a headlamp around 7:30PM. For my almost 12 hours of work, I was rewarded with 2 quarts of delicious maple syrup.
On a side note, our family is spoiled when it comes to maple syrup. I have always favored dark syrup, what used to be called Grade B, but is now Grade A Dark. We buy our maple syrup at the farmers market, usually for an eye-opening price. I did not think about it much until a few years ago when our son Henry mentioned that he did not like eating pancakes on Boy Scout campouts. When I asked why, he said the troop bought terrible-tasting maple syrup - the grocery store kind that, if you look closely at the label, actually reads "Maple-Flavored Syrup". So when you wonder why that maple syrup is so expensive at the farmer's market, just remember all of the time it took to remove the water. And buy it, because it is well worth the cost.
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