Fair-View Farm Blog

The final stage of the maple syrup process takes a long time! The sap is dumped into big pans with a hot fire underneath. We boil it down for hours, as it boils down, more sap is added. Normally, we boil down about 120 gallons at a time. Eventually it boils down enough to dump it all together in one pan. These are early in the morning as the sap is heating up, but hasn't started boiling yet. It's boiled down enough to combine the pans: (It's very hot at this point!)  Next comes the tricky part---telling when the syrup is done. Pull it to soon and you have really thin syrup, pull it to late and it will be really sugary... (Or worse, if you leave it over the hot fire too long it will burn and then there's nothing to do with it.)  So far this year we have had a couple batches that turned out good. One got left too long and Mom and Grace cooked it down to sugar here in the house. The batch that's shown in the pictures here was pulled just a littl...

The next step in making maple syrup is collecting the sap from the trees. We had to wait for a couple days for it to warm up enough for the sap to run. It takes warm, sunshiny days to get the sap moving, after winter has chilled and  frozen everything. As the sun warms the top of the tree, it calls for the sap that is stored in it's roots, so as the sap travels up the tree some of it gets collected by the tap and runs in to the bags. Because we only put one or two taps into a tree, there is still plenty of sap and nutrition for the tree. It's been running good so far this year. Here are some pictures of the collection process:  Dumping the sap into buckets to carry it. Carrying buckets to the edge of the woods  Next it goes through a strainer, and into milk cans to be transported back to the farm.   There was some frozen sap in the bags today that didn't come out- so we left it to melt: Waiting for the last of the sap to be put in...

It's an annual family undertaking: making maple syrup. This year the entire family was present for tapping trees. The equipment and supplies were collected, the crew bundled up and set out on the 1/4 mile hike across the field to the woods where we have maple trees.      Often when we tap trees we have to use snowshoes to be able to get around due to the deep drifts of snow. This year we had it easy since there is only a few inches of snow on the ground.  The demonstration on how to secure the bags on their holders.  Then while some of us worked on getting the bags ready to hang the others headed out to start tapping. First you drill the hole: Then you pound the tap in: And hang the bag holder with a bag on the tap   Now wait for the sap to run when the sun comes out and it warms up just a little! 

It's been great to have the nice warm weather here the past few days. Pretty unusual weather for this early in March. As a result, our fields are bare and the snow banks almost completely gone. And along with all the melting snow comes MUD. Mud makes feeding hay with the tractors difficult since the tires sink in and tear up the ground. Also, the cows don't like wading through it any more than we do, but the frost is leaving the ground, which allows the moisture to sink in, and already the ground is getting firmer. We saw our first robin of the year today (March 11) The weather report: It was almost 60 degrees today and we had a campfire and roasted hot dogs for lunch. :) Not something we usually do in March.

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