If you bounce on over to the
Camp Gray Blog you can find a little piece I wrote about all the sweet goodness that is going on around here lately. We love making Syrup. The kids are so enthusiastic about it, as are many others around camp. Below are just a few shots from the many facets of the process.
This kid is an expert sap collector! And taster. Josh likes to drink it right from the bucket and spiels.
Kids come from far and wide to help collect.
We went on the cheap this year and made homemade spiels from hollowed out Sumac branches. They are working like a champ. As you can see, we spared no expense on the buckets we choose too. Actually, the milk jugs work out nicely because the kiddos can pour them with relative ease.
Boiling sap means lots of time to hang out around the fire. With our new home built arch(see below) being so efficient it does not give off a lot of heat so on the first day we boiled, a second fire was lit just so we had somewhere to stay warm(it was only 25 degrees outside) and cook our hotdogs.
After many hours of outside boiling we bring in the "almost syrup" goodness to finish it off on the stove. Given our lack of Sugar maples on camp we tap Red maples which have an a lower sugar content. That means we need even more sap to yield syrup. Ours is roughly 55:1. Yes, you read that correctly. 55gallons of sap gives us one gallon of syrup and we are so thankful for that gallon! It's a wonderful process. Thanks for checking it out.
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