Maple Syrup Update

Bob has about 60 bags hanging on our maple trees. After one day, Bob collected 95 gallons of sap. He hasn't been able to collect any more because the weather has been so cold that the bags only have a couple of inches of sap in them and it's frozen. We don't process the sap, because the old sugar shack that was on the property when we purchased it almost three years ago, was falling down, and the roof collapsed two years ago, and Bob has been taking it down and burning it. There is still a wall standing, but not for long. Once the weather warms, Bob will be cleaning-up the area and landscaping there. Anyway, a church member and friend of ours that lives just about a mile from us, does maple syrup commercially and has all the equipment to process the sap. So Bob collects our sap and takes it to our friend and he processes it for us. It is 100% per maple syrup, no other ingredients are added and we get about one gallon syrup for every 40 gallons of sap. We are hoping that the weather cooperates and we are able to collect enough sap to make 15 gallons of syrup. Last year we collected enough for 13 gallons.

Bob had an interesting experience last year when he was hanging the bags on the trees. He carried his cutters in his back pocket so he could cut off small branches if they were in the way of where he wanted to hang a bag, and when he cut a small branch off one of the trees, the sap was flowing so he decided to stick the cut part of the branch in his mouth to see what the sap tasted like. He said it tasted like sweet water. And then he continued hanging the bags. That night he was up making lots of noise in the bathroom, banging cabinet doors, and then going down stairs and banging more cabinets doors, and I couldn't figure out what he was doing. He is usually very quiet about everything he does. But, I just waited until he came back upstairs and then asked, "What's wrong?" he responded, "Look!" and he turned the bedroom light on. I took one look and started laughing. I just couldn't help it. His lips were swollen to twice the normal size and they were bright red in color. Just before he had cut that branch off, the one he stuck in his mouth, he had cut poison ivy vines that were climbing up a tree. He had poison ivy on his lips and in his mouth. He suffered for over a week, but he learned a lesson and he had a great sermon he titled "Ignorance Is Bliss".