Maple syrup

    

Last year I missed out on making Maple syrup, I left it too long, this year I made sure I was going to reap the harvest.

The big Maple at the front of the house was one of four trees selected for sap collection.

I drilled a two inch hole and used Elder stems which had been de-barked and the pith taken out as taps, they seem to work ok.

Approx 40 litres of sap was collected and this gave me enough to get approx 1 litre of syrup.

A tripod was set up to boil the syrup over an open fire, I tried making some on the kitchen stove the day before and you could almost hear Nova Scotia Power flicking the switch on the extra turbine to fulfill my power needs so I cut some dead standing apple which gave a high heat and long burn with no sparks or spitting embers.The pot was filled twice in small increments to try and keep the boil going and eventually the water content was brought down and a litre of syrup was obtained.

 A pilliated woodpecker sat on top of the big Maple, I managed to get this photo while waiting for the sap to evaporate, I never seem to get a decent photo of these, the size of these bird  amazes me their twice the size of any woodpecker in the U.K.

As you can see in the photo the syrup has darkened considerably  and is very near to the end product.This took around four hours of constant boiling The syrup was filtered twice to remove any foreign bodies and canned.

After leaving to cool the syrup was still a bit too runny, not quite thick enough but certainly sweet enough, I'll keep the heat up a little longer at the end for the next batch to ensure a thicker consistency.

Well the proof of the pudding is in the eating and these tasted very good, pancakes and maple syrup, life doesn't get any better.