With our first batch of maple syrup boiled and bottled, the next obvious step is to sample our freshly made product. Pancake dinner tonight! We have a very clear division of labour in our household; Tony is in charge of making crêpes, while I'm in charge of making pancakes. It's just one of our rules. … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Pancakes for Dinner
The big day has arrived. It's not too windy, the sun is shining, and we have about five gallons on sap to boil. We like to boil small batches at a time. It will take about 4 hours of boiling for this amount of sap, but there really isn't much to do during the bulk … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Sap to Syrup
Temperatures are warming up and the fridge is melting rapidly. It is still cold enough for a ring of ice inside the pot to keep the sap nice and cold. We filtered the sap through some cheese cloth, brought out the turkey fryer and started boiling the sap. In previous year we boiled the sap … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Boiling the Sap
The arctic freeze moved on and the sap is dripping again. The snow softened and we can prepare an outdoor fridge to store the sap in. We prepare a spot in a shaded area; with warming daytime temperatures, we don't want the sun melting our fridge. The tree buckets had some sap in them so … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Our Fridge is Up and Running
Temperatures plummeted again and we were a bit late in prepaing our outdoor refrigerator. It was so cold that the snow froze. Since the outdoor refrigerator is basically a hole in the snow, it became a bit hard to do (yes, we just reinforced all those stereotypes about Canada). Well, when we say the snow … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Our Snow Froze!
Our My French Chronicles friend started a new project featuring "Bloggers With a View" from around the world. This month's video is Goodness Spreading, and it's a feel-good, upbeat video! Check out her latest 3 minute video. Spoiler alert: our very own little clip is the concluding clip. Guess what it's about!
It warmed up a bit and the sap started flowing again. The next few days will be slow as the weather seems to be colder again. It may just take a little longer to fill these buckets up. https://youtu.be/7gGOTwPi-tk Today, the good tree filled up half a bucket, the second best a third of a … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries: We Are Back In Business!
The weather needs to cooperate when you are trying to make maple syrup. As we mentioned in our previous post, the nights need to be cold and the days need to be bright and above the freezing mark. As karma goes, the weather changed almost immediately after we tapped the trees and temperatures plummeted to … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – A Snag
No, we didn't take up dancing. We do have however several maple trees that we tap some years to make our own maple syrup. Would you like to come along on our maple syrup making journey? Stage 1: You need cold, below freezing temperatures at night and sunny, above freezing days. We tapped three trees … Continue reading Coronavirus Diaries – Tap Time