Maple Syrup Time!

We officially boiled our first batch of maple syrup the other day and let me tell you....it is delicious! It is by far better tasting than the other maple syrups we have tried. So here's a few pictures of the process for those of you interested in seeing our setup:
We pump sap from our ATV storage container....

into our shack storage container...

then from there it goes straight into the boiler

Once it gets going and starts to sweeten up, it's time to make instant coffee with the sweetened sap water! MMMMMM so good!

Then we continue to boil and skim impurities from the foam naturally created on the surface

Once it starts to thicken up you filter/drain off the thick stuff and transfer it into the finishing pan with the propane stove. From there on you watch it carefully and test it with the hydrometer until it is ready to bottle.

Ta da!

Delicious! We processed around 40 gallons of sap in 10 hours. This was our first official run and we should be having a few more within the next couple weeks!

What's Sappening at the Sugar Shack 3/12/2014

We got sap...and a lot of it!! Around 38 gallons were collected today, which means there's enough to boil!

 Soaked from the rain while collecting sap.

Weather was cold and it's now freezing rain, so we just did a test run and are boiling the rest down over the next few days of nicer weather.
My Dad and I in the sugar shack boiling for the first time!

and then an old photo of my grandfather boiling syrup with a small setup back in the day! The trees in this photo are so big today that we are able to have each one tapped in two spots.

My Dad testing the syrup

Pretty cool process! We're bottling syrup this weekend and are preparing for the next run! :)

Maple Syrup Update 3/10/2014

So it's official after a few weekends of building and multiple "false alarms" thinking the sap was going to run and didn't, we finally are boiling the first batch tomorrow! The Shumway family has made syrup here and there on the property for multiple generations, but this year is the first year we actually have legitimate equipment including the boiler, holding tanks, finishing pans, hydrometers, filters, and even self sealing bottles. I'm really excited to see how it turns out. We have 29 trees tapped with 5 gallon buckets right now and are going to be tapping even more by the next run, which is expected to be happening next week sometime. Here are some photos from the first day of sap collection...stay tuned for more updates!
-Callie