Maple Sugar Time Again

I don't  know what kind of winter preceding the sap flow is the best for making sweet maple syrup, but I have my own idea.  I like the winters when we have a period or two of very cold temperatures early on, because I can imagine the trees truly going dormant during those periods.  I then imagine the trees trying especially hard to burst back into life later in the winter by producing very sweet sap.

The weather this winter has been such, although I really don't know if it matters.  We had a couple periods in November, from November 13th through the 15th and again 18th through the 22nd, when the highs did not reach much above freezing and the lows got down near the single digits.  We also had a very cold time earlier this month from January 7th through the 11th when the lows were near zero during 4 of those 5 nights.

Anyway, we decided to tap a few of our maple trees again on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Matthew and Simon did the work drilling the holes and inserting the spiles into the trees, but the whole family hiked up to the "sugar bush" to watch.  We only put in 6 taps, but the sap flow was on!  Those 6 taps produced 4 gallons in just a few hours and we started the boiling yesterday.  I'm sure there will be more to come because we are currently in a weather cycle when the days are in the 40s and 50s and the lows are dropping into the 20s at night.

We don't do this every year.  Looking back at my old posts, I see that we've made maple sugar/syrup in just 4 of the previous 7 years: 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2013.  I enjoy doing this, but it is a bit time intensive and some years, things just don't work out for us to do the syrup.  Last year was so extremely cold and snowy and we were busy settling into our move to Pure Water Pastures.  In 2009 we were preoccupied with the home butching of our first hogs and in 2012 the winter was one of the warmest on record and never felt like sugaring weather.  We are just now running out of the syrup we made in 2013, so this seems to be a good year to get back in it!