Five trees and two kids

Hello All,

My name is John and I live between Willi and UCONN, not too far from the large dairy. This is the first time I have thought of making syrup. I am using my kids as a cover.;)

I found five maples while raking leaves this past fall. I bought two buffet steam pans sets from craigslist. Went to Home Depot for 3/8 PEX to make the spiles. I have saved some gallon milk jugs to collect the sap. I plan to use concrete blocks to set the pans on to boil the sap down. I need to get some wood now!

I am keeping tuned to everyone to see when to tap. Any pointers? Thanks all!

John

Just keep reading this forum and you will know when others in this area tap.

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Originally Posted by JinCT

Hello All,

My name is John and I live between Willi and UCONN, not too far from the large dairy. This is the first time I have thought of making syrup. I am using my kids as a cover.;)

I found five maples while raking leaves this past fall. I bought two buffet steam pans sets from craigslist. Went to Home Depot for 3/8 PEX to make the spiles. I have saved some gallon milk jugs to collect the sap. I plan to use concrete blocks to set the pans on to boil the sap down. I need to get some wood now!

I am keeping tuned to everyone to see when to tap. Any pointers? Thanks all!

John

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Hi John -- Nope - No pointers - sounds like You have it all figured out....LOL.. Sounds like you are off to a good start - especially by including your kids. John browse thru the site - several of the guys use block arches. I boiled outside for a few years and used a small block arch - You will probably boil it down close to syrup this way - but - have to finish in the house. Also - If you are boiling outside - a couple of 4' x 8' sheets of chip board or something else will come in handy for wind blocks and a frame of some sort with a tarp over it would help keep snow and rain off you and the kids and out of the boiling sap. -- Lots of luck and make great syrup - that will help to win over the Mrs. when you are using her stove to finish up the maple syrup --- Mike

Ha! I used my kids as cover too!
Alas, their enthusiasm for a five week season (which is an eternity to them) faded fast. But they grew to appreciate the adventure when months later were still enjoying real maple syrup.

I think the only thing you may be missing is sap storage. Collecting it all is fun, but where to put it until you can boil? And where are you going to put tomorrow's sap?

Don't use a new trash barrel. Get a food-grade plastic barrel (30-50 gallons). Used ones (to ship apple concentrate, etc) are fine. Look online. They're cheap, but it's the shipping that hurts.... (Thank God they're empty!)

Good luck and have fun!

hey john if you want some taps i have dozens, maybe hundreds, of 5/16 tubing taps that still have some tubing on them from areas i redid and changed around in my woods, if you want to journey up this way towards the litchfield area sometime i will gladly give you some

cornell university maple homepage has an hour long webinar for the beginner. you should find all the information you need. good luck.

Here the direct link to the webinar;

http://maple.dnr.cornell.edu/web/schedule.htm

John, just my 2 cents but I'd take Marks offer on some real taps if you can. I hate waste, and poor fitting homemade taps will leak all season.

john, i have some extra real taps w/ a short piece of tubing on them from when i used milk jugs. if you want them let me know, i live about 15 min south of you in lebanon.

I tapped my first three maples three years ago, to show my 8-year old grandson how it was done. It was fun. He learned alot, and looks forward to Maple season now. Last season, I found two more trees for a total of 5.

Now I'm hooked. I hope to talk to some neighbors about tapping their trees. But when the flow is good, it's hard to keep up on my single turkey fryer setup. Thinking of getting a second one this year.

I use homemade taps also. I turn them on my lathe from maple or oak. I hook them up to tubing into 5 gallon buckets.

I suggest getting two additional items. Get some Cone Filters and a Hydrometer. It made a big difference in the quality of my syrup. There's info on MapleTrader.com about making a stand for the cone filter.

Good Luck!