Maple Syrup: Season 2. For Sale and B.S. thread

Bolton. About 20 minutes east of Hartford.

 

If you ever figure out how to post a video of the evap process I would love to see one. We have a bunch of maple trees at the farm and have made a small batch of syrup once. We are thinking about buying/building a small evaporator but want to better understand how it "flows".

 

I will try to figure it out when I have a few minutes. I can also talk to you about it. I'd be happy to help you figure out a good set up for your farm.

 

Feed the addicts first. Everyone else doesn't know what they're missing, we should just lie to them and tell them it's the same as store bought but we're just doing @Pudge a favor helping him fund his hobby.

I won't tell if you won't

 

I'm in for 2 quarts! Love the range of talents and hobbies on this forum!

 

Should go to repeat customers first!!!

 

Cooked for a couple hours after work. After 3 straight 12 hour shift in the ER it sure is hard to drag my ass to the sugar house but once I'm there it's bliss. Made about 4 gallons tonight.
Will have to head back out tomorrow to collect sap. supposed to be pretty warm here the next 2 days. Its tough keeping up right now. Still behind by about 200 gallons, but catching up. We hace cooked over 1000 galloms the last 3 days.

 

until you look at our taxes....

 

if you are not setup on youtube you could always just post it on Facebook and make the video public

 

If I were ever to leave CO it would be to go back to AK.

 

Got about 350 gallons today. Also used my transfer tank / pump for the first time to move sap from the woods out to the truck. It worked out well. I have a small generator in the bed of the truck that I run a cord up to a 55 gallon drum in the woods. I dump sap i collect into the drum and as I'm doing that I pump it to the truck. Saves a lot of walking and carrying buckets.

 

Here's my dad maning the tank and pump. That white hose leads to a 250 gallon tank in the truck.

 

Must be warm. He ain't even wearing a sweater.

 

It was in the 60s today, around 50 tonight then might reach 70 tomorrow. Not great for maple sugaring but it's supposed to cool down Thursday luckily. Sap flow was good today but I expect it to be slow tomorrow, who knows though. I cooked for a couple hours today then my brother took over when my daughter got home from School. There was 600 gallons of sap when I started cooking today so still lots of catching up to do.

 

That is what we call winter weather in SoCal. Except this year has been really warm and no rain.

 

Hey Sean, I still have one unopened bottle from last year. Is it still good? Does syrup go bad or expire?

 

It's still good. Not sure if it really expires but I know it can last a few years unopened.

 

The bottles are pretty cool.

Right now time is our biggest enemy. I promise as soon as we can we will bottle some syrup. To bottle 15-20 gallons is a full day project, but can't even think about that til we get caught up with all this sap. A cold spell for a few days "off" would be nice.

 

Sap flow was slow today as predicted. It just has been to warm at night. Supposed to freeze up again Friday so we should be back in business. I spent the day boiling which was quite a battle. It was 72 and sunny outside and was probably 90 and steamy in the sugar house. I cooked 6 hours and about 200 of the 600 gallons that was stored. So we are almost caught up finally. Also drew off about 4 gallons of syrup so we are right around 30 gallons so far, this Saturday marks 2 weeks since we taped the trees.

 

Would of never thought sticky tree water would have been so interesting and intrigue me so much. Really enjoy reading this thread and seeing your photos. I plan on ordering some once you have some available.

 

I wish you guys who follow this thread could come see it in person. It's so cool and very addicting once you're involved. I smell like smoke and syrup today and I love it.
I have 3 or 4 friends coming this weekend to lend a hand, need help collecting and splitting wood. We will trade them some syrup, but they just love hanging around the sugar house. It's a lot of fun and bonding over several cold beers

 

I would work for syrup!

 

Wood supply is low. With the amount we've been cooking it's going faster than last year. Will be splitting a ton this weekend that we didn't get to over the winter. Today in 6 hours I went through 5 full wheelbarrows of oak and one of pine.
3 or 4 logs gets added to the fire every 5 or 10 minutes so it goes fast.

 

im half tempted to head up there to split wood for a weekend and split wood... i love that workout

 

I bought a 35 ton splitter about a month ago. and my brothers neighbor is bringing his over for the weekend too, it's a 50 ton with log lifter, discharge tray and 4 way wedge. We should really be able to bang out a couple cords. Still have to chop away at some, I got my brother a bad ass fiskars axe for Xmas, makes it so much easier with the right axe

 

I try not to think about it much but I figure just between collecting, cooking and bottling the sap/syrup....from the tree and into a bottle for sale....for every 100 gallons of sap which makes 2 gallons of syrup...it takes about 8 hours of labor. Figure average $100 per gallon of syrup. So it works out to be about $25 per hour, split between my brother and me.

Then there's setting up, splitting wood, days of clean up. I bet I make about $5 an hour when it's all said and done, which just about covered the cost of gatorade,pizza and beer. Wtf am I thinking haha.

 

Like this?.....

 

I love having family and friends help out . Even my 6 year old daughter is really into it. I grew up in a farming town and have always been into stuff like this. We started making syrup when we were about 10. We also had chickens and pigs. I've been mowing the lawn since I was about 6 i think haha.
My parents definitely had us working as kids, have always been working outside and been into building things. I learned construction ,plumbing, electrical and how to work on cars all before I was even in highschool I think.

Im glad I went with the bigger splitter definitely need it at times. A 22 ton is more common but I figured go big or go home. It cycles a bit slower than the 22 ton units but gets the job done.