Bacteria is the enemy and one that must be conquered though constant vigilance. Once you have everything clean the trick is to clean again. Than when it is really clean you should clean some more. Last year we used so much water that the Mikes well went dry and started to cave in on itself. This year should be different as we are going to be making our own hot water using our big evaporator so hopefully we won’t run into this problem again.

We have been getting some pretty warm weather in the last little while. Plus temperatures during the day for the most part, it is way to early for this stuff we are not quite ready yet. I don’t think we are going to be convinceing mother nature to hold off on her time table, if she says jump you jump.

We have a friend coming up this weekend to work in the bush with us, I hope we don’t work him too hard.

“Stoke up the fire, it’s maple syrup time!”

They found us somehow in the online world and thought that it would be fun to use our product in the one of the commercials that they were shooting. Mike and I thought that would be a pretty cool and just today we received an email saying that the commercial was completed.

I think that the subject matter is very enlightening when it come to extracting sap from a maple tree. A very good seminar, but you be the judge.

flannel will never go out of style

That was before I caught the maple syrup bug, now I look forward to winter because it means we are only a few months away from spring ( I know I am jumping the gun a bit).

It also means that the holidays are just around the corner which is a busy time for maple syrup gifts of the season. For now I am just waiting until the first snow before I start thinking of that.

Until then I am going to be thinking of having the operation dialed in.

When everything is running just right we call it being dialed in. The wood fire is perfect. The temperature of the concentrate is slowly rising. The flow into the evaporator is set just right to match the steam coming off the rolling boil . The temperature outside is in the magic zone. But best of all someone else is splitting firewood.

The reason it took so long to get this thing out of the truck were these stupid little wheel wells which sat about 4” off the bottom. They where a constant battle with all the equipment, let that be a lesson for renting a 26’ Uhaul.

We had a great time picking it up in Owen Sound, driving down to Tobermory and making the crossing to ManitoulinIsland on the fabled ferry Chi-Cheemaun.

Here is a little video of our first born, Cheers:

Thanks to Roger Garside for helping up get this as quickly as we did.
Song “St. Joe’s” by The Dave Chapman Relief Fund.

I had a great time at The New Bloor Street Festival this year. It being the first year I did not really know what to expect. I wanted to get a place right on the corner of Russet and Bloor right above Hair Wave where our old apartment was.

It was great to talk to some of the people in the neighborhood. When I was living up north I didn’t know that there was a community in Toronto, I always thought that people kept to themselves and were distant to each other. Dominic at Hair Wave was, I think, the first person to teach me how vibrant and friendly Toronto can be. It was sad to hear that he would be closing his doors only one week after the festival was finished, after being there for 31 years.

The New Bloor Street Festival was put on by two great chaps Dougal Bichan and Sid Bruyn. I watched them running back and forth all day long organizing every little detail. There were also lots of great volunteers helping out. They did an amazing job and I can’t wait until next year. I wonder if they will still call it “New”?

We also had a chance to chat with some amazing people at the Starving Artist Waffle Booth. If there is one thing on the planet that goes perfect with maple syrup, it is waffles. We provided them with some of our very special Dark Syrup and it seemed to be a real hit.

There were ton’s of interesting people stopping in to say hello. One of them was a member of the Toronto Beekeepers Co-op of Toronto. They told me about a really cool plan to tap the trees in the parks of down town. Dufferin Grove park, right near my apartment, has about 20 or so really nice sized Sugar Maples most of them double or triple tappers. I think it is an amazing idea! The more sweat nectar of the gods we can get the better. This year they were able to tap silver maples and red maples but the city would not let them tap any of the sugar maples. Kind of makes you scratch you head but……. there you go.

All in all it was a great time and it gave me a chance to talk Maple Syrup with everyone who wondered by.

Running and evaporator efficiently is no small task, it may seem like nothing is happening but you have to keep things “dialed in” or you loose your fire, flood the pan or burn the syrup. There are also strange things that can happen when you least expect them. Check out this vid of Jesse dealing with something called a steam lock. This happens when the sap in the pre-heater boils causing the pressure to block the flow of sap.

Happy syrup making to everyone. We are indeed making maple syrup this year! Our first batch that was pulled of turned out to be about 20L, not bad for about 3 days work. I have been pretty sick after getting back from the Island and when I finally was feeling better I had to get back to work in a big way.

I did get a chance to upload a few videos on to youtube before I started feeling under the weather. I think this particular video captures the essence of what maple syrup production is like, well at least when things start to break. Mike and I have been bumbling around with some of the new equipment as we can’t really test anything until the sap started to flow.

Here is a quick little video of what happens to an extractor pump when you put to much oil in it.

Enjoy!