The Maple Letters, 2025

[Andy VT]

Another mapletrader note:
The thread "Cloudy sap and cleaning tanks" was helpful to me.
Each year so far my buckets, which primarily are former grocery bakery frosting buckets, at some point get quite disgusting before the end of the season and I've been thinking I need to take them in for a cleaning at least once before end of season, but it seemed like quite a logistic challenge, bringing them all home and back out again.
Couple days ago it occurred to me that if I can take sap away from the buckets, surely I can bring water to them.
I suppose you could argue this is no less work, but at least its less of a do-or-die commitment. If I get interrupted, I can start again later.
And it can be done even if the sap is currently running.
So yesterday (Saturday) I carried a collection bucket in one hand and a water bucket in the other.
The one full of ants was the sap (that's the biggest risk... keeping the two buckets straight!) and a clean brush.
And I gave all 27 buckets across the 35 taps a little water, a little brushing, swish and rinse, and moved on.
After all those 70 degree days, with good sugaring weather ahead, I think it was worth doing!
Saturday collection was about a half gallon per tap.
Today's (Sunday's) freeze will give me a chance to finally bottle batch one and bring batches 2 and 3 to syrup.
Batch 4 has been boiled a little and batch 5 is as it came out of the trees, but now a block of ice.

I've decided I'll bring even questionable sap (in those 70 degree days it was all questionable!) to syrup, but in separate batches. One of the great things about being a batcher. Why not try and see. But I drew the line at dog-pee-yellow sap. That got dumped on the ground.

[Andy VT]

Hi neighbors!
It's been a busy sugaring season!
Many goals have been met, such as involving E and J in sap collection, and training J on minding the evaporator. I is now too big for the backpack but I got him out for collection one day too.
Around 4 gallons of finished syrup have been bottled in many Ball jars, and at least 2 more gallons are in various stages of completion. And we did manage much better production from the norway maples this year.
We did our final sap collection on the 27th as my executive decision to wrap up the season to tackle many other goals such as getting our puppy trained and getting our gardens growing. The last bucket of raw sap was brought to a boil on the 31st. The maple season in our microclimate will actually last through April 2 and maybe into April 3, and some area folks will no doubt take advantage. I think this is going to go down as a big season in Vermont.

Good to see MF Sugarworks up and running for the 3rd(?) year, and while we're sad to see no activity this year at Rivendell Sugarworks, we are excited to see the establishment of ADL Sugarworks. The buckets are up at Lang Farm. We learned from John that this sap is processed by his relative (cousin?) in Jericho who gets sap from "all over". That's a long way to come for sap, but no doubt it's a great excuse to stop in at the ol' farm! P Sugarworks was established a couple weeks ago. They did watch the sugarpoem a few years ago but not recently. This should serve as a stern warning to watch the video at least once per year.

Lots more work to be done! We'll finish boiling the several batches that are in process, hot pack them into jars, and between tasks we'll come around and pull the taps. Then we'll get our labels printed and start making some syrup available! That's what it boils down to!

Andy, for the team

[Andy VT]

Hi Neighbors!
We're well out of sap season now and the apple blossoms are out. I think our last sap collection would have been April 2 if we'd stayed with it (and I think we would have made the quart-per-tap goal). Other parts of Vermont went into mid-April. A solid average season overall according to preliminary reports. And an all-time record for West Virginia, as it turns out. We hot-packed our final two batches the other weekend (sooner or later you just need your fridge back, no matter how busy you are starting your garden). Final tally is 5.8 gallons, though we did actually make 6.8 gallons. This brings us to our sad story. Batch #5 (of 7) was boiled all the way to maple syrup, just a day or two after our last update. We even filtered it after boiling as usual, and it just did not taste right. Terrible sour aftertaste after an initial strange sweetness. It seems most likely related to the 70 degree days we had mid-season, though we can't really be sure. What to do with terrible maple syrup? It was late. There was no space or time for bad maple syrup. Two more batches awaited processing. One gallon of filtered 67-brix medium-amber maple syrup went down the sink. It was a sad day.

A few days later at lunch at work I relayed this story to a co-worker. His face went into a frown with seemingly ten seconds of silence, and then he said with the same voice and seriousness of expression that I would imagine him using if he needed to tell me he had terminal cancer, "Andy, if this ever happens again, I need you promise me, you will bring the syrup to my house. I will find some culinary use for it. There's got to be something for it".

Indeed, though it was 10 times worse than good maple syrup, it was still 10 times better than molasses, and people pay money for that stuff! Surely someone would take bad maple syrup for free at least?

So... we'll do something with any "bad" syrup next time, we promise!

Happily, though we still have PTSD over the sour sap incident, batches 6 and 7 were, just as inexplicably, lovely. As are batches one through four.

We finally got everything sorted and I believe every tree provider and propane tank provider who is not out of town has now gotten a sample! The gates are open till supplies run out for syrup purchase for anyone interested.

Also thanks to all those who contributed to our local cub scouts popcorn fundraiser! At least 3 neighborhood kids were involved. Some of you have your orders now filled, and others are about to!

Andy, for the team at Pleasant Street Sugarworks

Oh, and consider planting a maple tree! Generally, sugar maple out back (they hate road salt and soil compaction), red maple out front, and when in doubt, silver/red hybrid (Autumn Blaze, Freeman, etc). Enjoy your mature Norway or Crimson King maples, but they are now known to be invasive so don't let them have babies. Nice to see the canopy filling out again!