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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

maple sugaring

When we visited Brian's family last month, I was surprised to find the operation set up on his brother and parent's property to collect maple sap.  His brother, Chris, had collected sap before and made up some maple syrup, but on a very small scale.  This year they had a few dozen trees tapped, and a huge cauldron of sap boiling down into the sugary stuff.

There are a lot of maple trees in Northern Indiana, so I grew up going to the Maple Sugar Festival and learning all about tapping trees and boiling down sap.  But it never occurred to me to actually diy maple syrup!  Chris told me the trees he had tapped give about 50 gallons of sap a day.  They have a large amount of maples on their property, so he's starting to consider bottling and selling the syrup.  It takes a lot of labor and hours and hours boiling down the sap into syrup.  But the end result is so delicious.
I think I'm craving pancakes for breakfast!

4 comments:

  1. that is so cool! just another piece of northwest indiana that i don't quite appreciate until i'm gone.

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  2. Very cool, that's something I've never attempted myself either but it really looks like fun. For some reason I'm not a big syrup fan... James makes up for it though, he's coo coo for syrup!

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  3. Gosh, that smoking cauldron, the sticks strategically placed there, for a minute it looked like Blair Witch. No, kidding of course. I LOVE MAPLE ANYTHING. Scones, bread, muffins. Syrup is nature's medicine. Yum, bring on those flapjacks!

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  4. That sounds cool. I wish I had maple trees. My daughter can go through maple syrup like nobody's business...and it's expensive!

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your comments are the peanut butter to my jelly!