Spring Happenings!

Howdy there!

I must tell you all what we did at the beginning of this wonderful season, Spring!

Can you guess what this picture is? You may think it is a still for making liquor in. But no. For one, we don't practice drinking, and for another, we don't believe in breaking the law.  :)
Or at least very seldom. :)
 

 Anyhow, this is something we made for boiling sap from maple trees. Ok, you have probably guessed it..... it's for making Maple Syrup.

 It takes dedication: you must first tap the trees, then you must gather it (that takes a couple of weeks, day after day according to how much sap you want) then you must have something to boil it in. If you are like us, when we do maple syrup we do a lot and so it takes longer to collect off of the trees and to boil, but I have so much fun doing it. My sister and I were the ones who collected it off the trees this year and I must say, it is time consuming, but did I have fun!

 So in this picture above, you can see a kind of furnace under the sap container that we dumped all the sap into to boil. Well, that big door is where the fire goes, and it should be kept hot for about two days. Never let it go out.

Then we have this tall thing. It is where the smoke can escape. You don't really want syrup that tastes like smoke, so we attached this baby to the furnace so that the smoke would ascend to the skies. :)


P.S. You can try to get most of the smoke out, but really, you are going to have a little smoky taste if you do it outside.

P.P.S. If you only want a little maple syrup you can boil down sap on your stove. It takes a lot of sap to make just a little syrup though, so you are fairly warned. And another warning is, if you decide to do it inside, your house might become a little sticky because of the steam rising from the syrup pot.  :)

Adios!!!