Forty Litres

Our days are warmer as evidenced by the melting snow. The sap has started to flow, slowly, but it is flowing.

We now have forty litres in storage. That sounds like a lot but remember it takes forty litres of sap to make one litre of maple syrup.

We would like to finish up with 25 litres of maple syrup which means we must boil down 1,000 litres of sap.

That's a lot of buckets to fill.

And we do it all by hand which is slow and physical.

But it's great to be outside, enjoying the warm weather and getting some exercise as we trudge from tree to tree collecting a litre here and two litres there, slowly filling our buckets and storage container.

I think we will try and boil off our first batch of maple syrup tomorrow. {Friday}

Saturday's weather doesn't look very promising for sap flow and we have a seed exchange in Maynooth to attend as well as a birthday party in Gilmour. 

Although our days are busy our maple syrup production is small and we can easily leave the sap in storage for a day or two until we find the time to boil it down.

Fortunately Carol and Don will be here next week to provide some much needed help. Collecting from forty trees using buckets and walking on snowshoes is a job best shared with family and friends.

Hopefully our next posting will be around the evaporator. It  is still buried in snow but I will dig it out today.

Thanks for stopping by and safe travels everyone.