The sweet season of syrup-making

Pure maple syrup

There's gold in those trees -- the maple trees, that is. This is the time of year in Wisconsin and Minnesota where maple sap is collected from the trees and turned into delicious, liquid-gold syrup.

We make syrup in an old-fashioned way. We have about 30 trees with specially designed bags hung on each tap. We collect the sap once or twice a day, depending on how heavy the run is. 

After a terrible season last year when the weather warmed too quickly, so far this spring the weather has been great for sap flow. The best conditions are for temperatures above 40 degrees during the day and dipping below freezing at night. This moves the sap from the roots into the trunk and provides the constant drip.

Most of our trees are not sugar maples, but you can make syrup from any maple tree. The ratio of sap to syrup in a sugar maple is 40 to 1, but it's closer to 50 to 1 with our maples.

Over one recent weekend we collected more than 50 gallons of sap. After it was cooked down, we ended up with about 156 ounces of syrup -- a gallon and three cups -- that was filtered and stored in canning jars.

The primary cooking down -- a process that evaporates the water -- takes place in our garage over a wood-fired stove. The stove's flat surface holds two roasting pans, which we fill with sap and continue to refill as it evaporates. When the sap has thickened enough,  it is brought inside the house for the finishing process.

The sap being boiled down

It's a long and tedious process, but we enjoy making such a delicious product from our land. Guests who stay at our inn -- Brambleberry Bed and Breakfast -- get to enjoy the fruits of our labors with breakfast.

We also have additional syrup available for purchase when we have a surplus. That looks like it will happen this year.