The sap went buddy. The trees don’t produce the same type of sap all year round. The only good sap is at the beginning of the season when it is clear and sweet. Near the end of the season when the trees start producing buds the sap changes  cloudy and bitter. The true tell tail sign is when you start to boil it you will notice the smell, there is no mistaking it.

Our clean up this year was also a bit hairy as the well on the property started to collapse which cased a ton of problems with sand. Making maple syrup takes a TON of water to produce. Most of it is used making sure everything is clean clean clean. We have back washed the bush and the solution is going to sit in the lines for a little while.

Cleaning the big evaporator was a bit of a challenge but we did get it all done.  A bit of a challenge when compared to the small evaporator.

Another great news is that the FIRE WOOD IS DONE!!!

 Trilliums are out again which means we are officially done all of our work in the bush (for a month or so). The Trillium is Ontario’s Official flower and they are illegal to pick or destroy,  this means we have to stop work in the bush which is all right with us.

I also have the pleasure of having my sister up from Guelph, it is a real pleasure to have her up here for the weekend.

We also had a chance to have Curt up here last weekend who is an amazingly talented arborist. He took down a couple trees that were around the camp so that the branches did not fall on any cars. Thanks Curt!

Curt is in the tree

Dave get to work!

Mike get to work!

"GET TO WORK GUYS"

And it snowed again on March 30th

We have had a great group of visitor in the last little while a few people who have never seen a maple syrup operation before. It it great when you meet people who really gets a kick out of the whole thing, you can really tell they love the process and are pumped to see it again. That is the thing with syrup, you can get addicted to the process as much as the taste.

Speaking about the process we have a great little video of batch 7, our bottling process and using the hydrotherm.

Enjoy

We are still chasing batch number 8, we are just trying to get enough sap to make it worth while to start up the evaporator. It has been a love hate relationship with the big dog, Mike had to take the whole burner apart and clean every nook and cranny. We know a lot more about how it works now, lets hope we can keep it working.

We have had a ton of visitors up at the shack in the few weeks that we have been boiling, It has been a lot of fun. We have put together a quick little video for you guys to take a look at. Shot on St. Paddy’s in the sugar shack Enjoy!

We also had a good group of people coming to visit us at the sugar shack. We were having a great time with Mike’s niece and nephews. The Kid were great workers especially when you keep them full of maple syrup. It was great to have them in the sugar shack, they were a great help!

Mike’s Brother in laws have also been incredibly helpful. Pat went though the whole bush and fixed up a bunch of leaks and John it helped out to bottle and fix technical issues, he has a knack for it.

It has been a lot of fun so far this year but the snow is going away quickly and it has not frozen over night in four days. I have a feeling it is going to end just as fast at it has begun.

If you would like to pick up a bottle you can get it at. The Bean in Sault Ste Marie. Our wood fired maple syrup is $27 for a 1L bottle. These are special small batches and we have a very limited supply.

Anyway here is a quick little video of what we have been doing and some pictures.

Enjoy.

We are still puttering with a few things around the bush, we definitely need to get the little sugarshack fixed up so that it is not a steam bath. I also built a make shift bridge for our quads to go over the main lines. It is quite the maze to figure out, if we can cross the line in that one little spot then we don’t have to drive in the complete opposite direction.

We were able to collect a tiny bit of sap over the last few days but really nothing to write home about (but I guess something to write in the blog). We have not really been doing a whole lot in the last little while, just waiting for everything to start.

Mike has set up his drums in the living room and we have been jamming the last few nights, it has been a blast. Brianna is really grooving the Mandolin and she only picked it up a few days ago.

So that is the deal we are waiting for the sap to run and avoiding tree branches.

We had our first bit of maple syruping on Friday night. I have been trying to get the office set up so that I can start posting stuff but the internet is stupid slow out here, It feels like my computer is from 1992.  I started a new category “production 2012″. So Since we started saptosyrup.com we have:

2011

2010

2009

2008

Vid to come on our first night of boiling.

Cheers