Friday, April 8, 2011

TGIF! presents...sap running.


'Bout as slow as molasses - or maple sap - ain't it? That's why pure maple syrup is so expensive. Takes time for the sap to flow from the trees to containers. It's only a small window in March/April when it does this. Then you have to transfer the sap to drums that feed into your evaporator. Then you have to boil the sap to a certain temperature, yielding about 1 gallon of pure maple syrup from 38 gallons of sap. And you can't leave the evaporator all day 'cause about 10 things could go wrong. And once you've collected your syrup you have to boil it again to 180 degrees to finish it off. And chop wood, drive out to the site, construct your evaporator, buy the bottles, etc. It's tedious and monotonous but when you taste it and you know it came from your hard work, it's worth it.

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