Well the next week my prayers were answered, it was cold for several days. We were able to collect nearly 30 gallons of sap. After collecting it I thought "great how are we going to boil this down". Running up to New York was out of the question. We needed a fire pit. Craigslist proved effective. I bought nearly 100 bricks for $10. Mike and I started brainstorming about what kind of container to use to boil the sap down. Our best idea was to buy a metal filing cabinet and weld it into a large pan.
Unfortunately the Penn State surplus store didn't have any filing cabinets. I really wanted to see if we could pull off the filing cabinet pan. Instead Mike found a couple of turkey pans. On March 24th, we formed an oven out of the bricks, cut wood from the same forest where we harvested the maple sap, and started a fire. It was a windy day which kept the fire going.
Pamela bought us pizza and we then continued to fuel the fire for 9 hours. At 11:00 PM we had boiled the sap down to 3 gallons. The next evening I finished boiling the sap and we ended up with 5 pints of syrup.
What a fun and wonderful process. Next year I will have to triple my number of taps and start collecting it earlier.
I can't wait!.
Happy Birthday Richard!
