home made maple syrup

 We made maple syrup - from scratch! well, from the sap coming out of our tree :)
And I must say, apart from having to pay attention the last bit, it's much easier than cooking lard (which I did last time I used the outdoor propane burner)... and smells and tastes much, much better!

When the last batch of sap had cooked down to about a gallon (the point I would otherwise add a new batch of sap), I transferred the sap to a thick bottom indoor pan and finished on the kitchen stove. I used a candy thermometer and kept the sap at a slow boil, checking every 15 minutes or so, until it reached 104-105 degrees Celsius (it's a Canadian fact sheet). Then I poured the hot sap thru a milk filter in sterilized mason jars and closed with boiled lids. Hot syrup is thinner than cooled down syrup, so it still looked pretty runny but when cooled down it was definitely a syrup - and sticky as can be.

We had about 5 five gallon buckets of sap and ended up with 3 quart jars of syrup. But Simon the 5 year old did develop a craving for maple sap so we now have a pitcher of straight from the tree sap (sugar water basically) in the fridge as well. I'll keep tapping the trees to feed to the pregnant goats and the growing toddler - and maybe, if the sap really starts flowing again (it's snowing right now...) I might even do another run. It's fun!

The only thing I'm not sure about is if I was supposed to strain the sap or strain the syrup (for little stuff that gets blown in) - the syrup sure did not want to go down the milk filter!