I am refering to the invasive species, Garlic Mustard. In the recent weeks a few articles have described the new found threat discovered on St Joe that has the Maple Syrup industry worried. Garlic Mustard is an edible plant brought over by European settlers for gardens and has since escaped the boundaries of rock and wire to roam freely about the province.

It seems garlic mustard produces toxins that contaminate the soil hampering the trees ability to grow and produce sap, at the same time multiply rapidly to out compete the native vegetation. After a few years the area invaded is dominated by the plant. It is a tough one to get rid of because of the fact when the plant is broken or cut off it is able to regrow quickly below the cut line and when left to its own devices can produce large amounts of seeds and destroy the ecosystem invaded. The seeds can remain viable in the soil for up to 5 years.

I haven’t had chance to do any patrols in the sugar bush yet but rest assured if any of these edible little devils make an appearance in Sap To Syrup’s slice of heaven they will end up in my kitchen.

Maple Producers Beware

Enjoy

Mike

The first person to email me back was Dave Lachance from lead inspector, he responded on the weekend with the following:

“hello dave,
thanks for the email and your inquiry.
the kits would be great to test the solder for lead.
regards,
dave lachance”

Not a huge response but it was a positive one, he also responded the quickest.

The second response was from Jennifer McIntyre from homax who simply emailed me back that they no longer carry this product.

Other than that I have not heard from anyone else. As it stands now I am ordering the Abotex lead inspector but I will continue to look for other ways to test for lead.

If anyone has information they think would be helpful please feel free to leave a comment.

That being said there was still a ton of stuff to complete in the sugar shack. You would not believe the hours we put in! Because I did not post anything all weekend I thought that I would put together a video that shows the whole processes we went through when building the sugar shack, enjoy.

I would also like to say thanks to Al for posting the information about the different maple syrup festivals that are taking place. If I hear of any more I will let you know. You check out the full list he has here.

I have been busy myself putting together a little corner for all my maple syrup stuff. I tripled my storage space (I added a shelf). I now have a place for everything to go and I won’t have to dig around to find labels or a book. I have a very understanding girlfriend to let me use what little space we have in our bedroom store all my maple stuff.

Of course this is nothing compared to what Mike has been done in the last little while. My hat goes off to him.

Anyway I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who purchased maple syrup over the holidays It is really going to help this year. It really pumped me up for next Christmas. I guess I have a few different times of year to look forward to. Next year it would be great to have store front of some sort, I bet I could really make a go of it.

I also made a few batches of maple candy, I am 1 for 3 right now and I think I know what happened last time. I let the candy get way to cold before I put it in the mold. I have not yet recorded how to make maple candy on video yet as I don’t want to look completely inept at the process. We will wait until I can look really professional.

I have found the time to put together another little video from that last time I was up North. It is a quick little show of what our evaporator looks like and how it will work. It might look a bit weird because we have one pan stacked on top of another to keep it out of the way. I assure you It will do the job this season when the sap starts flowing. I hope that you enjoy it and have a safe and pleasant new year.

We did not spend much time out in the bush today as the weather was not helping what so ever. We are going to be able to get a few small things done tomorrow before I have to head back down south to Toronto. I really wish I could stay up here from longer but I have to keep working away at my web development stuff.

We took some time to visit with Keith Brown and pay off some bills, we picked up a gripple tool and some mainline ties. We should be all set for tying on the lines early tomorrow morning.

After we came back we leveled out the main evaporator and put in a sink and counter. We also put some insulation between the roof and walls to hold in a bit more heat. It gets nice and toasty in there now.

I will be able to post some videos and pictures when I get back to Toronto.

Thats all for now.

I had the misfortune of cutting open my finger after buying a new Remington knife. Beware, I’ll post the picture when I am not on devil Dial-up. It flipped open on the car ride from the Sault less than 20 minutes after I bought it. Not a great start but I am sure it will get better.

The first stop we made on the island was Keith Brown’s. We picked up the wire spooler and the mainline wire. He was nice enough to let us borrow a gripple tool, this was an amazing and time saving device. It helped us get all the wire up in less than two days.

We then had Bill Smith take a walk through the our bush. He took a look at our layout and our plans and said it looked good to him. He did however have some real concerns about our evaporator.  We have two really great stainless steel flat pans but there is no way that we will be able to keep up with 500 taps on a 2x 6 pan. We might have to pull back the number of taps we put in this year. It is either that or come up with $4500 for a new flue pan. We are keeping our eyes open for quality used stuff.

We have also made some major modifications to the sugar shack. We replace the rough log roof supports with regular 2×6. This allows us to cut off all the huge logs that run the width of the sugar shack.

Tomorrow we will do some more finishing touches to the sugar shack and put up the main line.  We really wanted to get blue line run in the bush but it was not possible to get it here on time, we had to settle for the black stuff that was in stock. There is nothing wrong with the product it just takes a bit more effort to clean.

That’s all, will post tomorrow.

Enjoy

Mike

As I said I would here they are

Enjoy.

Marking Trees

Marking Main lines

This makes me very very happy indeed, but of course I miss the bush. There was  a ton of stuff that we accomplished over the weekend I was up north. Once I got a chance to get to know the bush I understand a lot more about what Mike was talking about.

I think that we are in a great place right now because we have been laying everything out and planning things together. Every tree that we want to tap is marked with red or pink tape. Where we are going to run the main line is also marked with blue tape and leveled. Mike and I had a great time chatting about how we were going to run the lines and what trees we were going to tap and how. If we were ever going to kill each other that would have been the time but we came out of it smiling!

We shot lots of great video and took lots of great pictures. I will be posting them soon.

That’s all for now