In our area the spring equinox comes close to the traditional weekend of the maple sugarhouse open houses, fun places to visit to celebrate spring and see how maple syrup is made. Sadly though, probably due to climate change, the sap stopped running and the last boil of the season happened on Friday, two days before we got to Goshen Hill Maples. The friendly couple running this one, though, had a fire going and boiled water to illustrate the process to visitors.
It seems the days of tapping a tree and hanging a bucket under the spout to collect the sap are gone by. These days tubes bring the sap to the holding tanks and then to the evaporator. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield 1 gallon of syrup. One tree will produce about 10 to 20 gallons of sap, or a quart to a half gallon of syrup.
We bought two quarts of their maple syrup which should last us for a year. 🙂 I have a salmon recipe that uses maple syrup in the marinade which we have at least once a week. Our days of eating pancakes or waffles with maple syrup are long gone, but we have many fond memories of the deliciously sweet weekend breakfasts.
Sweet! Sounds like a nice day to experience the process of maple syrup making…
It was a nice day, but I did miss the pleasure of smelling the sap steaming away…
I like maple syrup. I didn’t know about the modern ways in which is processed now. Interesting to learn about it.
Back in the 1970s Tim’s aunt and uncle used to make their own maple syrup, the old-fashioned way. I’m not sure how I feel about tubes strewn about through the woods.
Barbara, thank you for showing this process to me. Obviously, we don’t specialize in producing maple syrup here in Central Illinois, and I enjoyed learning about it. Too bad you couldn’t have included a teaspoon full for us to sample!!
You’re welcome, Debbie! I wish I could share the taste with you. 🙂 Do they import and sell any real maple syrup in your area? What I missed was the wonderful smell of it filling the air, but when the sap stops running before the open house it couldn’t be helped.
Short season this year, a hard fact for folks dependent on a good season for income. But I do love the flavor of maple syrup! My new diet disallows grains and processed food/sugars, but maple syrup is okay, yay. Did you know you can make pancakes from mashed squash, almond butter and eggs? They’re pretty good! They must be cooked on low heat, so it takes me about a half and hour to make a batch for two. Worth it though. 🙂
Is the season over in Massachusetts now, too? I thought it might last a little longer farther north. My diet is also grain-free. With my radiation proctitis I cannot tolerate fiber so squash wouldn’t work for me. I bought a package of grain-free pancake mix at the our food coop but I haven’t worked up the courage to try it yet. The fiber per serving is kind of on the borderline of what my gut can handle. Sigh… Wish I could try your recipe, though! 🙂
Thumbs up to local maple syrup … but wow … sure takes a lot of sap to produce some. Enjoy!
Thank you, Frank! It’s no wonder it costs so much when you think of all the work involved. But the taste is worth every penny!
What a lovely sunrise photo.
I had no idea about how much sap it takes to make the syrup; very interesting.
I’m with you, a bottle of syrup will last us years.
Thank you, Suz! I love watching the sun rise. A little bit of genuine sweet maple syrup goes a long way! 😊
Interesting! I wish you hadn’t missed the final days, but how neat to still see. I just love real maple syrup!!
We do, too. Back in the day we were snobs, refusing to order pancakes at a restaurant if they didn’t have real maple syrup to go with them!
Spring Equinox Sunrise is Beautiful! We also enjoyed the spring weather here on Sunday with a beautiful day in the neighborhood walk.
Thank you, TD! So happy to hear you got out for a neighborhood walk and took advantage of a spot of spring weather. 😊
Today Yorkie and I got out to the Island sea wall which is a 17 miles drive where I lived two years ago for a decade. We walked the sea wall on the beach shoreline. Yorkie loves the sea wall, but not the beach sand. And easier that I don’t have to bathe her.
You would have loved seeing the white winged black tips Pelicans flying in wind formation lines. The first set I saw, there were about a hundred that flew over the faint half moon. I secretly wished you could have captured that moment with your lenses. I saw four sets of pelican lines, one cormorant, only a few gulls. We walked 10 miles (5 down and 5 back).
Yesterday there was a fire 300 acres and six homes in a small community about an hour away. The weather pattern pushed the smoke towards my home in the Bay Area which I could smell on the front porch and to the Island which filled the air with a dusty color and oder. That part of our outing was odd. Two long outings in one week. The cold weather is behind us now.
Walking along a sea wall sounds wonderful. There is something so healing so being close to the ocean. Breathing in the salty air soothes my soul. A ten mile walk is very impressive! I bet Yorkie enjoyed it, too. Did she react to seeing the pelicans? I would have been in my element trying to photograph them, especially with a moon in the picture. As you know, we don’t have pelicans up here.
Too bad about the fire. I hope this won’t be the beginning of a fire season in your area. Our cold weather isn’t behind us yet — it’s not supposed to get above freezing on Monday. Wishing you many more long outings in the coming days and weeks!
This sea wall on the Island is definitely unique and has been a part of my life, all of my life as I’ve been walking that sea wall since I was a child. I also think that there might be healing components of the saltwater, but I could be wrong. Something for me to dabble into a little research perhaps.
Yorkie was in her joy as soon as her paws touched the concrete wall; she was full speed ahead pulling me behind her. No, she certainly wasn’t interested in stopping to see the Pelican flights. That was my joy.
The Pelicans don’t hang in the beach waterscapes, but they were in flight towards the Lagoona Madre area. They do hang at the bay front and marinas. We have the white ones and the brown ones. I so enjoy watching them lunch.
We really don’t have a fire season here. Sometimes there’s periodic droughts which we have been in for a few months. So there are fire bans. Control burns are used to keep the grasslands safe. Yet, there are instances where the grasslands can spark fire from a tractor or bbq ambers in flight. So, yes, there has been several large acreages of fires lately. This can happen anytime of year.
As Isak Dinesen wrote, “The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.” One of my favorite quotes. 😊
There is nothing like local syrup. Especially New England syrup. This post is so interesting about the process! Enjoy. I’ll take mine with blueberry pancakes please. 🙂
Mmmmm ~ good. I have fond memories of blueberry pancakes, especially ones made with blueberries we picked for ourselves! Topped with butter made from the milk of grass-fed cows (from Ireland) and Vermont maple syrup ~ it doesn’t get any better! 😊
I would like to go to our Metroparks one time to see this Barbara and I understand they have self-guided tours, which I’d be interested in, but those tours were cut off early and they didn’t say why – guess I know from your informative post. Those are huge holding tanks and the ratio of how much maple syrup actually ends up is equally amazing. Sad they don’t tap trees like they used to; same as milking cows and not doing it by hand but by machine.
Interesting comparison between milking cows and tapping sugar maples… So many labor-saving devices invented for different kinds of farmers. Things can never stay the same. The couple at this sugarhouse said that less debris gets into the sap when it comes through the tubes, but still, seeing endless tubes of ugly plastic across the woodland doesn’t have the same appeal as the sight of those metal buckets hanging off the trees.
I agree with you Barbara – you and I like the quaintness of the the tapping of the sugar maples, but it makes sense too, a labor-saving device and a cleaner process just like milking cows when you have a huge herd of dairy cows.
I remember listening to a computer program once and the interview was about using computers for irrigating crops. The farmer used a laptop to set/schedule the irrigation device to water his field, by zones, if I remember correctly. After it was set up, he controlled the crop irrigation with the click of his computer mouse! Talk about “set and forget!”
Using computers for irrigating crops could prove to be a good way to save water, if the computer takes into account the amount of local rainfall so the field doesn’t get over-watered. We’re going to need to make good use of these new tools to manage the water shortages and other problems climate change is creating. It’s just amazing the data computers can manage.
Yes, it is amazing what computers could do to help as to irrigation and hopefully help in other ways to improve drought situations.
It was a fascinating interview. The farmer was older and had been farming for many decades and spoke about how it has made his life easier.
Maybe I will get to see that interview some day. Progress can be a very good thing, or even a mixed blessing.
Mmmm, maple syrup. Like you, we don’t eat as much as we used to. When the kids were little we used to put it on pancakes and waffles. Now we just sweeten lightly. Thank you for the tour of this place, and sorry they weren’t fully operational. I don’t think our sap is running yet, but it should be (hopefully) soon.
Ah, so the sap running does depend on temperatures more than the amount of daylight. Very interesting. I do miss those days of weekend pancake breakfasts with the little ones, and then with the teenagers who ate us out of house and home. 😉 I hope you get some pure Michigan maple syrup this year for your pantry.