Hitchcock in Suburbia??

Our neighbor has homing pigeons. Which means that, many days, we have homing pigeons. Up until today they kept their lurking to the garage roof, the house roof, or an occasionaly foray into the driveway for some pecking and scraping and general presence. Nothing more than a very minor nusiance as they disperse and sometimes scare you in their flight away from the human walking towards them.

Today was different. They became bolder. More sinister. More......present.


Just before I took the picture, there were four pigeons on the window ledge of our bedroom window. I was sitting on the bed, working on the advisory job work, and I heard them cooing rather loudly. I looked over and there were three. Just looking at me. From the window. Lurking. Menacingly. Stalking almost. I imagined them thinking, "Ah ha. NOW we know where you sleep. Very interesting." I may or may not be extrapolating and exaggerating, but they COULD have been thinking that, who are we to say that they can't have such birdy thoughts??

If you have been paying attention, you realize that I initially mentioned FOUR birds. I, of course, have no digital proof (I think it is all part of their master plan to freak me out)...........but the 4th is the ring leader. He is the one I am worried about. The 4th was hanging off the window screen in an attempt (in my mind) to get inside the house. All flappy with his wings and graspy with his claws....no talons......pigeon talons of death....just there. Making his presence and his posse known. Grasping the screen and then flapping his wings as if to fly off with the screen in an effort to return and better peck his way through the window. To me. As I lay sleeping tonight.

I might be imagining this, but you never know. Maybe they heard we were making maple syrup.

Winding Down.

We have almost two gallons of syrup. How much does a person really need? Lest you think we are sugar fiends and syrup hogs, we are sharing it will those that came out to our house to help with the process.

And the meat smoking that is a week from Sunday...the bacon will be maple flavored this time.

I think I am ready to be done talking about, thinking about and writing about maple syrup.

You?

Now THAT Looks Like Syrup....

Our new set up has produced much better results, for which we are quite pleased. The new brew kettle has almost solved the problem entirely. Instead of dumping boiling sap into another pot (much like you might drain pasta) to reduce further on the stovetop, we have been doing this.


Now, that catches a lot of the sugar sand as it has hopefully settled below the level of spigot. I believe we would have more settlement if we were to wait a period before siphoning it off, but we have so much sap to reduce it just seems like it would be taking too much non-boiling time. So, we have been filtering it as it comes out. Like this:


You can see how much gunk is caught by the filter. Which translates into less gunk for me to skim off the top of the syrup when it is just about finished/finished.


This is what it looks like in between the boilings: from raw sap to reduced sap before we put it on the stovetop in the kitchen to finish it off.


You can see a difference in the appearance: The first picture is our very first, sedimenty, batch. Cloudy, opaque and sedimenty. The second is our second batch that produced much better syrup. It is boiling clear, you can see the boil bubbles as they come up fromt he bottom of the pot, it just looks like boiling syrup, not boiling syrupy milky milk.



Which translates into this: first batch of syrup on the right, second batch on the left.


Look at the clarity! I feel like I am becoming a syrup nerd.......quite honestly, I don't even love maple syrup. There I said it. For me, I just wanted to learn how to do it and just try making it. I rarely order pancakes at a restaurant, preferring to go for the eggs and toast or omelet. I don't crave pancakes with loads of maple syrup. I detest maple flavoring, I never pick maple log doughnuts, I don't like maple in my breakfast sausages.....why am I doing this again? It is just one more thing in the learning hopper from which to draw. You know, if I am ever stranded on a deserted island and need something to do with my time.


It is just so pretty. So pretty.


Just to keep us humble, our third batch has some cloudiness, but not like the first. That's okay, as we will have to do something with the first batch anyway, what's one more jar??


I will share this with you: In the past, when people gave me homemade food gifts, my thoughts were, "Mm. Nice.", and then proceeded to mentally put my appreciation along with the jar and forget about it. After having made blueberry jam last summer, canned pesto, roasted the red peppers and dried the peppers, "helping" with the meat smoking, and now this syrup business....I don't think I can do that any more. I know how much work goes into these things. I am obliged to appreciate the fact that someone is sharing with me something that is precious to them as a result of the work and time that has gone into it. Unless, of course, it is like canned mushrooms. That's my line in the sand. Ew.

Sugar Shack, Sugar Sand and other Sundry Sugarbushing Tales

Okay, so we may have been overreaching with the "pancakes for breakfast" scenario. I went to bed at 12:30 am the last night I posted. I couldn't do anymore reducing on the kitchen stove as the thermometer wasn't taking a reading because the level of sap/syrup was too low. So, we decided to wait until we had more sap reduced down, to bring the level in the kettle on the stove up. The boys stayed up until 3:30 am.

Which meant that, yesterday, I had more reduced sap to work with and so I put a pot on to boil right when I got home from school.


There was a lot of particulates or sediment in the bottom of the storage kettle after I dumped into the pot we already had reduced down, which will become more important later in our little adventure. It looks like calcification which turns out to be be somewhat true in that it is calcium deposits.



It looks like it would be hard and crusty from looking at the picture below, but it actually is more powdery than it looks. It comes off really easily with water. When it is in the sap boiling, it looks like talcum powder might look in a kettle of water when you swirl it around. It's called sugar sand.....our new friend.



So, back to boiling the sap. As it reduced down to a lower concentration of water and a higher concentration of sugar, it started to look different.



If you have ever carmelized sugar, it looks the same. The bubbles break differently, it takes on a thicker, slower appearance.



And......we continue boiling.

Meanwhile, out in the sugar shack, we have a new set up. Our sugarbushing partner decided it was time to use his brew kettle. Bigger. Meaner. And it has a spigot. I just wanted to use "spigot". It's a fun one. We could crank out more boiling in less time. The photos are deceptive. The kettle is pretty big.



This is a photo of straining the raw sap into the brew kettle; I missed taking it the first round of boiling. It is basically cheesecloth in a kitchen strainer to keep the bigger particles like dirt and gunk.



And....we continue boiling. As we got closer to being done, it started to foam. I was really glad that we didn't have much in the kettle once it had reduced down to more sugary than watery. It is at this point tht you really must watch it carefully. It expands quite a bit and you are almost done and cooking it longer than needed will burn it and ruin hours, hours people, of hard watching of stuff boiling.


You can see just how much it expands in less than a minute....I think. It seemed really fast.


It is done when the thermometer reads 104 celcius or 219 farenheit. Or the spoon test if you are familiar with jelly and jam making. I don't have a picture of this as I was too concerned about going past that and burning.

We decided to "can" our syrup in Mason jars as I said in the last post, so at this point when we are getting close to being ready for the jars and hours have gone by, I realize that I have not heated my jars. I quick throw them in the dishwasher and do a hi temp sani rinse. I also put the lids on the stove to heat while the last bit of syrup magic is happening.

We wanted to filter it one more time to get some more gunky stuff out. We tried the coffee filter method. It started out working okay. A pretty steady stream dripping out the bottom.


Look at how beautiful that syrup color is.


It was fun while it lasted. As the syrup cooled, it got clogged in the gunk and the filter. Then, I may or may not have knocked the jar and spilled a bit on the counter, down the dishwasher, onto the floor. Precious moments. Brought to you by me. I don't have a picture of that shining moment for you. But I do have this for your viewing pleasure. The syrup equivalent of getting your car stuck in the mud two blocks from your destination after a cross country road trip.


Eventually, we got it into jars, by keeping the flame just enough to keep the syrup warm, but not too hot. We tried cheesecloth, we tried various methods....but eventually ended up using a super fine mesh spoon, similar to a non-disposable coffee filter. It wasn't fine enough, but it was better than the roadblock we had. Which resulted in cloudy-ish syrup.


You can't really see through the jars as you might with maple syrup. As the jars cooled and things settled, it became clear how NOT friends we are with sugar sand. A new nemesis, in a different way than Doritos, perhaps? These pictures are in the order in which we processed them. You can see how they become progressively murkier at the bottom of the jar.





We have had better luck today and I will try and get the results on tomorrow. I have high hopes there will be no murk. No gunk. No clouds of doom. But apparently there WILL be drama by the way I am talking. Over and out. Gotta go empty the sap buckets.

Boiling Sap.

There is so much. So much sap. Holy cow. We don't have small trees, so that is part of it, but I don't think we were prepared for how much we have gotten.

I got home from school and the boiling sap process had begun. I missed taking pictures of straining the sap with a splatter screen we got with our cookware set and a piece of cheescloth over it. The stock pot with thick walls is doing better, from the report I got upon arrival home, now that it is in the garage, protected rather than out in the driveway. It was reported that the wind kept affecting the flame. The sap starts out just looking just like water, but as the sugar content gets higher and the water content gets lower, the color begins to darken...seen here.



We, and by we I mean not me, boiled the sap for a couple hours and got it reduced down to a quantity that we could move inside to finish. For us, right now, that means my 8 quart stock pot. Which is boiling on my stove as I type. We are monitoring the reduction. And by we I mean me. The boys are outside in the garage, with the next batch of raw sap. They just came in to report that it is now boiling, after maybe 4o minutes on the flame.



We are planning on canning it in Mason jars when we get to the point where we have syrup. The sap is syrup when the temperature reads 104 celsius or 220 Farenheit. I am a little nervous about being in charge of the finishing as if I miss the point of syrup and it turns into Maple Sugar, I screwed up. OR worse yet, burn it and ruin it.

I will tell you that everyone here is pretty excited for breakfast tomorrow. Mmmm, pancakes, homemade syrup and breakfast links made by the boys in the last round of meating. If the aroma of the kitchen right now is any indication, yum. And Yum.

What Have We DONE?

Remember when I said we were going to tap our silver maple trees? And we were going to make maple syrup? And how hard could it be? Well, we got a late start, and by we I mean me, on ordering the taps. Now I wanted to go all nostalgic and get the old fashioned kind of maple taps and pretend I was Laura Ingalls Wilder and all that old timey business. But, because we, and by we I mean me, were late in the ordering (Late like early last week) everything was sold out. So we got what are called drop line taps. Which is pictured above.

And actually, I think my procrastination might have been a helpful thing at this point. They are plastic taps and a rigid tube about four feet long comes out and we have put them into Ale Pails from a sugarbushing (I am pretending I am all in the maple syrup community and using the lingo. I could totally be using the terminology completely wrong.) partner in crime. He also makes beer and is a meatsmoking partner.

We tapped the trees last Monday, and by we I mean not me. I came home from school to alien looking forms. Then we promptly had a cold spell where the temperature dropped below 40 degrees during the day. No sap running.

Until today. Yikes, it got up to a measly 42, maybe 43 degrees. I picked up sticks in the yard, I raked the red rock back into the driveway from the winter of shoveling and then on a whim I thought I would check the sap buckets. This bad boy had 4/5 of the bucket full (That's a 6.5 gallon bucket, folks.). And that was at 2 pm.

There are two trees with three taps in them and five gallon buckets to collect. There are two trees like this with just one tap and a gallon-ish bucket. This baby was almost full.

!!!!!!

We went to my parents for birthday supper and came home around 7:30 pm and had to empty the little buckets AGAIN.

And we are not even in prime weather. Plentiful sap running is after the temperature drops below freezing overnight and then is sunny and near 60 the next day. Tomorrow is supposed be around 43 again, but overcast which could slow things down. We, and by we I mean not me, are going to have to boil sap tomorrow. We don't have any more containers. And the sap can't sit around when it gets to be in the 40s and 50s because bacteria grows and the sap will spoil.

So, we are making syrup.

And by we, I pretty much mean not me.
Things done so far:
-ordered taps---me.
-tapped trees---not me.
-set up buckets for collection---not me.
-bought boiling container---not me.
-bought cheesecloth to strain/clean sap---me.
-check buckets for sap level---me.
-possess inability to open ale pail covers---me.
-actually open buckets to pour sap into container bucket---not me.
-begin first boiling and actual production---not me.


Sap boiling and condensing into syrup has to be done largely outside. Two reasons, it goes faster when there is a bigger difference in temperature of the air and the sap boiling. Two, the steam is sappy and we have brick walls in our kitchen above the stove and that sticky, messy, oozy, gooey residue would never come off the uneven surface of the bricks. Not that we would even wanted to try. And by we I mean a big me.

Over and out. Sugarbushing Day Two coming soon. Unless we are inundated and can't see the light of day.

Step Two.

Today we are going to meet with a potential Mama dog. Yep, we are starting the process of looking for a puppy in July.

Am I okay? Absolutely. Am I excited to be around a big-dog-slash-big-dogs? God, yes. I miss a canine presence in the house. I miss Sophie. But I know that doesn't get to change so I am excited to change the presence part.

In the car yesterday, we drove by a huge, beautifu, HUGE fawn colored Great Dane with a black mask. I was a little embarrassed at how excited I got. I might have squealed. People. I don't squeal. Really, I don't.

But I did.

And that's my point.


I am just hoping I don't embarrass myself further and bust into tears at the doglady's place. That would monumentally suck. And........for those that know me know that this a very real possibility. Crapenheimers.