Milking a Tree

When we first came to Pennsylvania a friend or ours, Mike Horning, described to us how maple syrup was made. I was flabbergasted that maple syrup actually came straight from a tree. Nothing is added to it, all you have to do is collect maple sap (i.e., milk the tree), boil it down until it is thick, and "Whala" you have syrup. I thought wow, I have to try that. Maple syrup runs during the late winter/early spring when temperatures creep below freezing at night and above freezing during the day. I was speaking with Mike about a week ago and said that I wanted to try to make some syrup. Mike is very efficient at finding things so we headed off to a True Value hardware store where we found and purchased maple sap spiles. The spiles are placed about 1 1/2 inches into the tree and they allow the sap to run down the spile into our buckets. We also needed buckets to hang on the spile. On the way back from the hardware store we found a recycle bin and went dumpster diving for milk cartons and other miscellaneous jugs. We found a bottomless supply of containers. I emailed the owner of the wooded property at the end of my street and asked him if I could tap his trees for syrup. Pamela suggested that he might be a tree hugger and wouldn't want me to damage his trees. Well, tapping a maple tree doesn't harm the tree in anyway. Also the owner of the property is a partner in a company called "Lezzer Lumber." Needless to say, he had no problem with me tapping his trees. Now the hard part, how to identify a maple tree during winter when they don't have leaves. I unsuccessfully tried this on my own. I told Mike that I was a "Padawan Learner" and needed his expert advice. We set off into the woods and Mike showed me the "Scientific Method" for discovering maple trees. Drill a hole in it and if it drains sap then its a maple tree.

We found more than 15 maple trees, drilled a small hole, pounded the spile into it and then hug our jugs on them. Instantly we were collecting sap. Throughout the week we collected over 40 gallons of sap. You might think, wow, they have tons of syrup. Well ... not exactly. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 3 or 4 quarts of syrup. That means a whole lot of work for a little enjoyment. During the week Mike & I boiled down a few gallons of sap on our stove. Delicious! I was hooked. It would take a lot of electricity and a long time to boil down 40 gallons of sap on our kitchen stove. So, we headed up to Mike's home in Corning, New York to use his dad's evaporator and process the rest of the sap.

We cut up old pieces of wood from around Mike's parents home for fuel and placed our sap in the evaporator. Mike's brother Zane volunteered to let us use his antique metal fan to blow the fire. When I say antique, I mean antique. You had to reach in and twist the metal blades to jump start the fan. Mike's dad helped us cut wood and assemble the evaporator and the women (minus Pamela who was home working studiously on her comprehensive exams) were really nice and prepared us a lasagna dinner.

We boiled the sap from 1:00 p.m.until about 8:30 p.m. in the evaporator. We then took the sap into the house and boiled it until about midnight. It took us 12 hours to boil down nearly 40 gallons of sap. While it was boiling we had to skim off foam, keep the fire going, and continuously split wood. We used a hydrometer at the end to know when to stop cooking it.

I told Pamela that making maple syrup was a lot like going on a Boy Scouts camp out. We got to play with fire, it was wet & cold, and there were no women around (most of the time they were in the house). Well, we ended up with just under 3 quarts of syrup. It has a delicious buttery maple flavor. I learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to make a little bit of this divine liquid. The weather is now warm and the sap is not running so I am currently praying for colder weather so that we can collect more sap and repeat the process again.