SAPPING TIME ON THE FARM

Hello Neighbor, glad you stopped by.

When it gets around February or March, depending on the temperature and weather, one gets to thinking that it's time to think about home made maple syrup.  It is not an easy or quick job to do, but it sure is worth the effort.

First of course you need to have a number of good big maple trees. The farm house had some nice old ones that were around the yard, and there were others not too far away.  First step was to put in some kind of  spout for the sap  to drip out of the tree and into a bucket.  The early ones were carved out of a piece of wood and had a small hole drilled into it.  When we lived on the farm we were able to buy spouts from the hardware store. Much easier by far.  Anyway, these spouts would be pounded into the side of the maple tree and a bucket would be hung on a hook so the sap could drip, drip, drip into the bucket. The bucket would be collected at the end of the day and the sap poured into a container.

I remember that out back of the farm house someone, my Dad built this cooking place. The fireplace would be made of rocks on three sides with an opening on one end to put in the wood to burn.  Then a long flat tin pan that was three to four feet long and a couple of feet wide would be set on top of the rock fire place.  A fire would be started and kept burning to keep the pan hot.  What sap was gathered would be poured into the pan to get hot and steamy. It would take a lot of sap and a lot of wood to keep it cooking.

As the sap cooked it would begin to change from the watery stage to the thicker stage.  Once it was on the way to becoming syrup, most of the sap would be steamed away and there would be only a small batch of syrup.  From the fireplace, the syrup would be taken into my grandmother's kitchen and put into a pot on the wood stove to finish cooking away the watery part until it became real maple syrup.  Boy oh boy, it was a lot of work, but my oh my, nothing tasted better than home made maple syrup.

Stop by again some time and we will have another chat.