March 2019
The sap is flowing, the sap is flowing! Maple sap, that is. Welcome to a selected maple-flavored model of my This Month On The Homestead sequence. As we communicate I’ll cowl the strategy of tapping our maple bushes, working tubes between the bushes, and amassing maple sap. Since I used various phrases to jot down down about all that, I’ll dedicate a future publish to the exact boiling of the sap to make the exact maple syrup. It’s a protracted course of, people, and the documentation (not lower than when it’s written by me) is equally prolonged.
Since we’re throughout the sticky thicket of sugaring season, all homestead actions this month have been related to creating maple syrup. Once more in October I regaled you with our plans to make maple syrup and now, I’m proper right here with half two of my maple syrup mini-series.
Sugaring (the verb of “to make maple syrup,” which I maintain inadvertently terming “syruping”) was a life goal for Mr. Frugalwoods and me. Once more throughout the dream-fueled days of homestead planning, the facility to faucet bushes on our land and boil their sap into sweet, sweet syrup was on our guidelines of the best 5 points we hoped to do someday. THAT DAY IS HERE.
Now we have now zero aspirations to point out a income from our homestead-related labors; fairly, it’s about fulfilling our need to dwell additional sustainably and deepen our understanding of engaged on the land. Plus, as you’ll see, sugaring is so time intensive that we’d ought to price about $700 per gallon to interrupt even. To not point out generate exact income… so that’s a nope. Our sugaring adventures have been mentored and impressed by Kate from the Vermont Evaporator Agency who offered us with a sap evaporator (which I always want to call the evap-o-tap for no good function) and a bounty of sugaring intel.
Whereas I’m for the time being consuming gazing at some excellent accomplished maple syrup on my counter, instantly I’m starting to start with of this season’s journey. To begin on the REAL beginning, return and browse How We’re Preparing To Make Maple Syrup.
In case you’re merely tuning in, it’s a recurring sequence throughout which I doc each month of our lives out proper right here on our 66-acre Vermont homestead. After leaving metropolis Cambridge, MA in Might 2016 to chart this wholly fully totally different life, we’re experiencing a relentless finding out curve of exploration and a great deal of foolish novice moments. Check out closing month’s installment proper right here and enjoy the best and worst (okay, largely the worst) moments of our first 12 months on the homestead proper right here. Questioning if it’s cheaper to dwell rurally? Check out: Metropolis vs. Nation: Which Is Cheaper? The Last Value Of Dwelling Showdown.
Gathering Our Sugaring Offer
As all good homestead initiatives do, our sugaring journey began with gathering supplies. So many supplies. We are the proud owners of SO MUCH homestead stuff that it’s an outstanding issue we have a barn to retailer all of it in. Sidenote: in case you’re questioning if it’s dearer to dwell on a homestead than throughout the metropolis, it is. Be taught why proper right here.
Beneath is an itemized guidelines of all of the issues we bought to facilitate the first part of sugaring (getting the sap out of the bushes). I’ll make clear what all of the issues was used for in a momentito.
Purchased from Bascom Maple Farms in Alstead, NH:
- 3/sixteenth tubing (2 rolls of 600 ft each)
- Taps
- Tees
- Closed End Tees (for the beginning and end of line)
- Unions to splice 3/sixteenth tubing to itself
- End clips to secure tubing throughout the tree you begin at
- Fittings that translate from 3/sixteenth to 1 / 4 inch
- Vacuum gauge
- Tapping bit