in 2023 we are taking our first dive into the world of maple syrup. Our farm is absolutely perfect for developing a large scale maple production facility. Its not every day that you can say that you are given an amazing legacy of 3500 mature maple trees planted in perfect rows that the Pearson family had the vision to plant. and although they never had the opportunity to see them to maturity. We are so fortunate that we were able to save, purchase, transition and enhance their amazing vision.
This year we are starting small we tapped 100 trees and purchased a used evaporator so we could learn and experiment. Although climate change has definitely created some challenges I’m excited to see how well the trees are porducing . We will be developing some marketing and branding and should have some syrup for sale in a few weeks.
Maple Syrup the experiment:
So this year was my first year to start tapping my trees. I started by attending the national and state conferences on maple syrup production and learned a lot but it still doesn’t prepare you for the actual doing. So I rolled up my sleeves and started by investing in a used evaporator and picked an area of about 100 trees to tap. The weather was ideal with the daytime temperatures going up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit and the nights being cold down to 20. I bought 100 buckets, tubing and spickets and began drilling the trees. I only put one tap per a 10 – 12 inch tree I had no idea what I was in for. The hole I drilled into the trees started running sap as soon as I drilled the hole. It was amazing to see the trees already producing sap. After I gently tapped the spigots into the trees (a friend told me she learned the hard way that its called tapping instead pounding for a reason) and connected the tubing and buckets I was excited to see the sap flowing down the tubing and into the buckets. Within a few days I had full buckets and now needed to fire up the evaporator. Friends helped me gather wood and we fired up the evaporator and watched the steam begin to rise. This process becomes a community event and everybody pitches in to help. But the evaporator couldn’t keep up with all the sap coming from the trees. My neighbor farmer brought me several 275 gallon totes and I began to fill them with sap too. I could easily keep filling for totes this spring since the weather is cooperating with the warm days and cold nights. But we will need to keep an eye on the trees to watch for the buds start to form, which indicates that the sap will start to turn bitter and I would be done pulling sap for the year.
About south side and roots
