What a ...

... tasty treat!!

(Let us know when you're having waffles/pancakes, O.K.?)!

A family about a mile from where I grew up near here has been making maple syrup for years - it works when there are warm days and freezing nights, in spring. Began in early February, for some, around here - and that's really early!

ole joyfuelled ... with a bit o' help from maple syrup, on occasion

What a lovely gift! Gosh, the price of real maple syrup is through the roof here, how nice you have it locally and that they thought of you.

What great neighbors! Enjoy. Next "What's for Dinner' just might feature pancakes from Marilyn Sue.

Nice neighbors!

What thoughtful neighbors you have, Sue. They must think a lot of you, of course that is pretty easy to do!

That was so nice, enjoy your treasure!

What a wonderful surprise!! My neighbors leave me gifts all the time! Well their little pets do, and I always pick it up with my doggie-poo bags and dispose of it! You are lucky to have such great neighbors, wanna swap? LOL

only have seen it done on the tv...but what an awesome gift for you....enjoy your golden gift...

Boy do I remember the sugar camp. When I was a kid on the farm we had a wooden shed about 18' x 30' with a 5' sliding door on both ends. Inside the shed there was a huge stone fireplace with the chimney on one end of the building and the firebox extending nearly the full length of the room. The top of the firebox was covered with a steel pan 16' long, 5' wide and about 8" deep. The pan was set so the end near the chimney was about 3" higher than the opposite end where the opening to the firebox was.

Along the right wall there was 600 tin & 450 wooden buckets stacked upside down from floor to ceiling.

During the month of February there was still too much snow & mud to use wagons so we hitched a team of draft horses to a home made wooden sled called a "Stone Boat" and we would cut & haul firewood until we had at least 4 to 5 cords stacked just outside the sugar house door. About the last week of February we would fill 15 or 20 ten gallon milk cans with water and haul them down to the sugar house on the stone boat, then we would put the water in the sugar pan and start the fire. When the water was warmed a bit we began washing the buckets and loading them on the stone boat, then off to the woods to hang the buckets.

Using a hand brace & bit we would drill a 3/8" diameter hole in the bark of the maple tree stopping just at the cambria layer (the internal layer between the bark & the wood of the tree). We then used a hammer to drive in a "Spile" which is a little tubular tap and we then hung a bucket on the spile and snapped a sheet metal lid on the bucket. (1 spile for each 12" of circumferance around the tree.) In an average year we would put out about 800 buckets scattered throughout about 45 acres of woods.

We then laid two 50gal wooden cider barrels sideways on the stone boat so the bung hole on the side of the barrels was on top and chained the barrels in place and we set a huge copper funnel in one of the bung holes and stacked about a dozen 5gal buckets on the stone boat, hitched up the team and headed for the wood. As we wound our way along the roadway through the woods we stopped every 100ft or so and we each grabbed two 5 gallon buckets and went to the trees were we poured the sugar water from the buckets on the trees into our 5gal buckets and carried it back and poured it into the barrels on the stone boat. When both barrels were full we went back to the sugar house and parked the stone boat on a hill outside the side window of the sugar house and used a rubber hose to siphon the sugar water from the stone boat into the evaporator pan on the fireplace. We then stoked up the fire and stood around the sugar house a few minutes to warm up, while the men had a few drinks from the hard cider jug, then we boarded the stone boat and headed out to the woods again, generally hauling at least two and sometimes three loads of sugar water a day from the woods to the sugar house. Once the process was begun it was a daily routine for the next 3 to 4 weeks.(it takes 35 gallons of sugar water to make one gallon of maple syrup).

As the sugar water evaporated down into maple syrup the heavier syrup would collect on the low end of the evaporator pan and we used a big dipper to take the syrup out of the evaporator pan and put it in 10gal milk cans so we could haul it to the house where Grandma would fill one gallon cans for retail. In 1965 a one gallon can of pure maple syrup sold for $72. (The maple syrup we buy in the grocery stores today is at best a watery substitute that is about 10% maple syrup and 90% corn syrup).

I remember there was a thick yellowish gray clay in the creek that ran close to the sugar house, Us kids used to take potatoes and eggs and pack them in that clay and set them in the firebox. With about an hour the clay was dried hard as ceramic but when you cracked it open the potatoes or eggs were thoroughly cooked and that was our snack while working. If we were lucky we would get a nice clean snowfall, then we would take a dipper of the maple syrup out of the evaporator and pour it on the snow. Instantly the maple syrup cooled and formed a thick maple sugar candy.

After the sugar run was over it would take about a week to collect all the buckets and stack them back in the sugar house and that signalled the end of winter activity. It was now time to begin spring plowing & planting.

Lucky you Sue!!! What are you going to make with it? :D

Maple syrup is indeed a treasure. Very expensive, due to the labour-intensive gathering and boiling.

I've collected some buckets in the past, but most people use a "pipeline" now, if they have any number of maple trees. It still has to be boiled and cooked, and it takes a lot of sap to make 1 litre or gallon of syrup.

Our neighbouring small town has an annual Maple Syrup festival, the last Saturday in March.
It's the largest 1-day festival in the world. It generally attracts more than 66,000 people.

Here is a link that might be useful: Elmira Maple Syrup Festival

I haven't decided yet what I am going to make with it. I will have to find time to look up some recipes. This is the first year the kids have done this. I know he boils it outside on something he fixed up to do this. Maybe I will "donate" a couple trees next year they can tap.

Sue

lazypup, thank you for the history! I grew up in a small village where it seemed like every sugar maple in town was tapped in the winter. Fresh maple syrup and maple sugar candy was such a treat.

My husband and I were just talked last night about fresh cider. He's only had it a couple of times! Of course, it's not as common to find it in the South, where I've lived for many years, but we're going to search some out this fall.

Young couple next door has plastic hose going from Maple trees to buckets--two trees. They couldn't get much but this is their second year here and second year doing this so it must be worth doing.