I didn't have the camera out for long. The North Wind arrived 30 minutes after we started tapping the trees, and I couldn't have cared less about snapshots or more about huddling in front of the pellet stove.
Birdie needed more feathers.
First taste of sap.
Annika begged to help, so I passed her the brace and bit for a few trees.
Anyone who's heard Aidan's ape-language can imagine the sounds of explanation he tried to make when I caught him dipping into the sap buckets.
We were able to boil down most of the sap on Mopsy's wood stove and only used the propane burner for a few batches. Propane is so much faster...but it's not free.
We finished it off in style indoors with a steamy kitchen rife with syrupy smells. Until next year! (And now I have to go plug the trees.)
Since changing our wood stove to a more efficent one that heats the house and not the metal stove, I have lost my ability to boil down sap effortlessly and without the use of fuel. Because I know no other way we skipped it altogether this year. (Again.) Next year we MUST though or it will be no pancakes for a year.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the minor facts of MILK COW and NEW BABY, this year would have been a good year to try some propane simply because propane costs were so gloriously low! I keep meaning to take a picture of my mom's woodstove for you guys. The enclosed box my Dad rigged up for the top of it funnels the heat out only after it allows stuff to be roasted and/or boiled down on top of the stove. Matt's so handy he could whip it up in an afternoon, and you could probably just pull it out for sap season in order to save $$ and keep the woodstove as is for the rest of the year. Knowing Matt, though, you'll probably have yourselves a genuine evaporator when you next gather sap, and then you won't have to worry about inefficient, makeshift methods! :)
ReplyDelete