Maple Syrup Sunday

After tapping the maple trees last weekend, we had to go around each day and empty the sap buckets before they overflowed. Whit built a sled using some old skis and leftover pieces of wood that fit three Polar water cooler bottles, which we used to collect the sap until this weekend when we started boiling it down. Many people have big, nifty drums on horse or ATV-drawn sleds that they use to transport their sap to the sugar house, but since we only put out 16 buckets this year, our small sled is enough. We like the plastic 5-gallon water bottles with their small necks so the sap doesn't splash out as we pull the sled along.

Leaving one of the bottles near the woodstove, we were able to fit the other two water bottles and our grandson, who liked the ride, in the sled. It sure made it easier for him to keep up with us.

He thought the whole collecting process was great entertainment, and he had a front row seat!

After the sap is collected from all the buckets each day, we transfer it from the water bottles into a clean, new 30-gallon trash can so we can fill the bottles with the next day's sap. By the way, the trash can is only used for collecting sap. When the sap season is done, we store the buckets, hats, and taps in it for the next year.

When we're done making the trip around our small "sugar bush," we leave the sled out by the sugar shack for the next day. Well, okay, so the sugar shack isn't built yet... Rome wasn't built in a day either. : )

There was still quite a bit of snow last week, but slowly, steadily, it's been melting.

Maine actually celebrates Maple Sunday, which was this past weekend. It's the day that all the commercial sugar houses around the state invite people to stop by, sample, and buy their syrup. Our storage containers were all full, so we needed to start boiling our sap down into syrup. Like the rest of Maine, it usually turns into a fun social event for us too.

The bottles are emptied into a bucket that sits higher than the evaporator on the woodstove. The sap is gravity-fed into the evaporator.

The boiling process must be constantly supervised to make sure the evaporator doesn't boil dry. Impurities rise up out of the sap as it boils, collecting in sort of a scum on the top, so someone needs to keep skimming that off. TBear is taking a turn at the job here, while his chum watches.


It takes all day to boil the amount of sap we've collected. Whit starts the fire right after chores in the morning. By lunchtime friends have joined us for some home-made soup, fresh bread, and Sunday worship around the evaporator. It really was a wonderful day of rest and fellowship.


Below is the bucket of sap feeding the evaporator on top of the woodstove. The woodstove is recycled from an old fireplace insert. My talented brother fabricated the nifty copper evaporator for us.

The snow is melting quickly. Hopefully the weather stays below freezing at night and warms up to near 40 degrees during the day for the next few weeks. We need to make enough syrup (before the weather turns too warm) to last us until this time next year, when we'll do it all over again.