It's "sugaring time"! WHOOO!

There's a small window (generally) - the end of February, beginning of March - when maple sap flows like honey and you can collect it to burn maple syrup. Last year was my brother's 2nd season producing maple syrup and my first time helping him. Back to Nature = awesome!

Check out my first post on our adventure, "Aunt Jemima's Maple Syrup Envy, Vol. 1". You'll find subsequent posts from this series in the April 2010 archive, located on the right side panel - just scroll down. NO WOMEN ALLOWED (one exception might be made)!

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Booth Hollow Maple Syrup. My brother's recipe.

UPDATE: Late February/early March is molasses sap collecting time in Wisconsin. My brother and I spent some time in west/central Wisconsin this past year doing just that.

This is the final product: Booth Hollow Maple Syrup. If you'd like to check out previous posts from our maple syrup activities, check out "Aunt Jemima's Maple Syrup Envy" Volume 1 and Volume 3.

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Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy. Vol #6 - Voila! Maple Syrup.

Our first batch of maple syrup - the result of boiling around 40 gallons of maple sap. It's not as thick as store-bought syrup. Course it's pure maple syrup - no additives. And it tastes damn good. This is the last post in the "Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy" series. Hope you enjoyed it reading it; we enjoyed livin' it.

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Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy. Vol #4 - "Gimme that old time radio show!"

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows....muahaaaaaaaaa."

Remember when there were no TV's, iPods, computers or Internet and video games? Probably not - which is one reason I think kids today are screwy (but that's another post). As I mentioned in an earlier "Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy" post, the only entertainment available in the cabin my brother and I stayed in was satellite radio and whatever CD's were around. Typically, dial is set to the XM old time radio station and it stays there - on all day.















Radio - that's all there was. On any given day you could hear The Shadow, Suspense, The Green Hornet, Gunsmoke, The Whistler, Your's Truly Johnny Dollar, The Black Angel, Hopalong Cassidy - hundreds of classic shows. Orson Welles, Vincent Price, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball and hundreds of other stars could be heard performing. You know, when celebrities were multi-talented. I worked in radio sales for about six years so perhaps I'm somewhat partial to radio's "theater of the mind" quality you don't get from other media.

This is what my brother and I listened to all weekend. Here's a sample of The Shadow. These productions were top-notch - from the acting down to the production value. If you've never heard one, you should really try and listen once. I find it easier to write and "listen" then try and watch TV (which I rarely do anyway).

Above: Peter Lorre (far left), Hans Conried (3rd from left) and Harry Morgan (2nd from right) performing in Peter Lorre's radio show in 1947.

Here are a few old time radio websites to check out: Radio Classics, Radio Spirits, Greg Bell Media and XM Satellite Radio/Radio Classics.

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Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy. Vol #3 - The soggy mountain boys start burnin' sap!

Soggy mountain boys today...

...and soggy mountain boys in days of yore.

My brother (top photo, right) and I taking a photo op break while burning sap into maple syrup. Watch the video below - it'll explain all the details so I don't have to repeat them here. Let me just say this process is laborious and tedious and time-consuming and the result is very little maple syrup. Which is why it's so expensive. But the time spent with my brother is priceless.



Here's a 2nd video - just watch the beginning to see the color grades of the sap as it thickens. The rest of the video repeats what I went on about in the 1st vid. You'll want to click on READ MORE! to see more pictures of the still - I mean, the evaporator that my brother constructed to burn the 150 gallons of sap we collected. It's a pretty impressive set-up.

NEXT POST: Vol #4 - "Gimme that old time radio".

The evaporator - without the pans on top.

You can see where the fire is built. The boiling pan stretches from the back of the chimney to the front of the evaporator in order to create a draft and speed up the heating process. Me must've burned 2 1/2 full trees throughout the weekend.

You need to boil sap 7 degrees above boiling temperature before you can draw it off (drain the syrup into a bucket). As the sap is boiling and water is evaporating (leaving the sugar), the syrup bubbles and foams and you don't want it to boil over. That's where the bacon comes in. Just dip that in the syrup and the fat alters the consistency of the boiling syrup just enough to bring the bubbles down. And you can eat the bacon later.

Little has changed in making maple syrup. Check out this dude in 1912.

And my brother in 2010.

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Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy. Vol #2 - A cabin in the woods.

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, the cabin we stay in belongs to friends of my brother's. It's located near Dodgeville, WI and sits in a valley on 1,000 acres. Beautiful and quiet. Deer feed in the fields below the cabin, the dogs run around at their leisure...might hear a tractor or chainsaw or an errant gunshot here and there but other than that...quiet.

We didn't turn the water on for fear that the pipes might freeze after we left. So we pumped water into buckets and used them for dishes and washing up. But no showers. Too much trouble. It's just us - who cares? There's no heat aside from the wood we burn in the fireplace. Electricity, yes. No TV and cell phone reception is 5% to not at all. We have satellite radio and we listen to two stations - Old Time Radio (more on that later) or Bluegrass. The radio's never turned off.

The video below gives you a nice tour of the cabin.



Click on READ MORE! for a few more pics, just to give you an idea of where we lived for a 6 or 7 days.

NEXT POST: Vol #3 - The soggy mountain boys start burnin' sap!

Deer stand.

Breakfast. And milk.

Dinner. Pork and beans. And milk. Come on - we're from WISCONSIN.

Outside looking inside looking outside a barn.

View of one of the barns from where we were burning the maple sap.

Barn wall.

Jas and the dogs - Molly and Zol (at his feet) - relaxing with Daddy.

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Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy. Vol #1 - Tappin' sap.

"I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I've had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick?"

- Vince Vaughn as Jeremy Grey in "The Wedding Crashers"

That grand old tree above is a 180-year-old maple my brother tapped. This was taken late in the day which would account for the bluish tinge...great picture. Jas first became interested in making maple syrup last year. As is true in many instances, his approach to the art has been fine-tuned over the past year. I was lucky enough to become involved with it so stay tuned for several blog posts entitled "Aunt Jemima's maple syrup envy".

I spent the last weekend of March in a cabin on 1,000 acres of woods somewhere near Dodgeville, WI with my brother collecting maple sap and burning it into syrup. This series of blog posts outlines our weekend together (along with his dogs, Molly and Zol) and the labor intensive hobby of making your own maple syrup. Quite the process, I must say.

I went up to the cabin the weekend before last to help Jason collect sap while he was working out the kinks in his homemade still - I mean, evaporator (I'll get to that later). I already posted a picture on the cabin we stayed in (friend's of Jas') and a picture collection on an abandoned hunting shack on the property. This particular post will outline some of the in's and out's of sap collecting - I suggest you check out the video below as I take you through one sap collecting outing.


Click on READ MORE! for more pictures on all the prep work before you start making maple syrup

NEXT POST: Vol #2 - A cabin in the woods.

Jas makes meticulous notes on where each maple tree is located, what time of day he collects sap and how much sap he gets from each tree (see notes below). I can't tell you how many hours he spent researching the "making maple syrup process" in order to perfect last year's endeavors.

Sap is collected from the bags hanging on the trees (you can use a bucket as well), then poured into these 5-gallon jugs. They're a bitch to carry through the woods, especially since most of Jas' trees are located in little valleys that makes walking akin to running a marathon (see video above). One particular walk is about 400 yards into the woods and uphill.

This is your typical tap. Below you can see a tap from last year that's "repaired" itself.

Over the course of two weekends, I believe we collected (guessing) 150 gallons of sap from 40 trees. That'll make at most 4 gallons of maple syrup. As I mentioned, it's "the journey" that really matters.

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