Gone Sugaring!

Last weekend, my friend Belinda invited me to come see how to turn maple sap into maple syrup. She and her family do a joint sugaring venture with friends of theirs near Avon, MN. I followed Belinda out to their house, which involved several turns onto increasingly smaller county roads, long stretches of farm land in between, then a dirt road, another dirt road, and finally, a dirt road leading to their house by a lake with woods. Amazing.

Saige teaching me how to collect the sap

The Walsh family working the sugar Maples

First, we went out and collected the sap. They have around 100 trees tapped. Belinda, her husband, Scott, 3 of her kids, one of the other family's kids, and myself went to all the trees, and collect the sap from bags that are specially made for the purpose. We poured it into 5-gallon buckets. It looks completely clear, and has the viscosity of water.

The sap bag nailed to the tree

Scott collected the 5-gallon buckets as they got full and piled them into a trailer pulled by a 4-wheeler. We trecked through the woods and collected all the sap, and it was lovely in the woods as the sun set, and it had been a very warm day, so it wasn't too chilly.

I'm helping!

The 5-gallon buckets then get poured into a giant holding tank (about 5 feet tall, 3 feet wide, 4 feet long...) and is filtered as it it's poured in, to get rid of all the bugs. Scott did the pouring, while Belinda and I handed him up buckets and the kids ate pizza.

A forest of Sugar Maples

Scott and the dad of the other family have a setup in a different part of the woods, near the house, which is a fire built inside a cinder-block frame about 5 ft long by 3 feet wide by 1 foot high. We went on Saturday night, and the fire had already been going steady since Friday. On top of the frame is a big open tray for the sap. There is also a smaller tray that empties down into the big tray, so it heats slowly before it's poured into the big tray. Then the sap is boiled down. It takes 40-80 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup!! It boils down for a long time. I was there for hours and didn't see much change in the syrup. I helped stir it for a bit.

Boiling down the sap

After it's done there, they will pour it into big pans and filter it through a much finer filter, then bottle it in Mason jars. So much work goes into the maple syrup!! It was amazing to see all of this, and help out with it. For one night.

The buckets we collected of sap, waiting to be poured into the big holding tank