I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Steve Fopeano for several years, and his Dog Wood Hollow adventure was evolved to now include maple sugaring.  Steve regularly shares updates and perspectives from his DWH endeavors, and with his permission – you can enjoy this latest entry as much as I did.  Steve can confirm – maple is infectious!

It was brisk but not cold when he woke up for the second time. Although the fire in the stove had died back, the little cabin retained enough heat to be comfortable inside the ancient military sleeping cocoon, but not much warmer than that. It was all the excuse he needed to wait until 8:00 to emerge from his polyester chrysalis.

He had parked the Kubota at the cabin the night before. Leaving it in its shed a quarter mile away at the end of the driveway would have required a bracing morning constitutional stroll first thing. There is a time and place for such a thing and this was neither. Nighttime skies were clear so he was betting on a dry seat when he made the morning rounds.

In the “old” days or in snowier seasons, checking all the taps and collecting the morning’s maple sap might have involved harnessing the horses and hitching them to the sled. Or strapping on snowshoes and burdening himself under a pair of buckets on a man-yoke.

The three cylinder diesel workhorse fired up with an obnoxious clatter that shattered the silence of the woods and filled his nose with exhaust fumes. At such moments he wondered if, in fact, a horse and sled would have been preferable.

He had arranged a circuit that took him first downhill in the muddier parts and uphill on the grassier return. Even so, recently thawed forest path had its greasy spots. Last fall he had the prescience to mark the donor maples with a day glo orange “M” when it was easy to sort them out by leaf. It would have been much more difficult to go by bark in winter.

Only 45 taps were drilled in 20 trees conveniently along this circuit. The plan paid off as the gathering process involved draining a plastic collection bag into a bucket, then dumping the sap into a barrel in back of the Kubota. Easier said than done! Spilling ice cold sap on ungloved hands was not fun. Stumbling through the woods with a load would have been a temptation for random wild grape vines, thick as a forearm, to trip, dump or worse. Marginally functional shoulders only renewed awareness of his own mortality.

In spite of himself he finished each round in a half an hour and enjoyed the satisfaction of a 13-gallon barrel full of clear maple sap. Twice a day for three days.

The bags were hung simply by poking spiles through them. Most of the time this worked well, but when 2-3 gallons filled them they looked exactly like cow’s udders just before milking time, impossibly swollen. Sometimes the bags ripped and spilled. He would shake his head, call it a rookie mistake and vow to not use that kind of bag next year.

He watched the forecast carefully. Warm days and cold nights were perfect, but too much of the former could spoil raw sap. It had to be kept cool like milk. The weekend became a contest between boiling and barreling. That is another story.

The running joke among syrup producers is that once started, even as a humble hobbyist, the addiction quickly grows to involve many thousands of dollars and weeks of time every year. Hmmm, he wondered….

The swollen bags of sap hung on the trees, the same bags and the same trees, each day. It was as if the trees were giving him a gift, asking nothing in return except maybe respect. Humbled and honored, he promised to honor the trust given him. Not only the sap, but the cherry wood from the tree that used to shade a future garden patch. He had harvested, dried and stored more than a cord since the summer. Nature’s gifts would not be taken for granted.

The initial boiling was on a hotel buffet pan on a flat-topped wood burner. The cast iron circles on top were removed so the flames from the roaring fire would do their job all day and all night. For days. He added fresh, clear sap to the pan to keep the level up and avoid burning in a moment of inattention.

He knew that professional operations could produce finished syrup efficiently, but his goal was just to reduce the volume to fit in jugs he could carry home. The 13 gallon plastic barrels used in the harvest would weigh an unmanageable 100 pounds loaded. They weren’t going anywhere, at least not full. Besides, he collected more sap than the two barrels he had at hand could hold.

While awkward and inefficient, his plan worked. With more than half the volume evaporated over a wood fire, he returned home. Using a turkey fryer, he could boil the now darker tree juice until it was ready for finishing inside.

Why not skip the outside fryer and bring it all in the kitchen? To get to syrup, that is, 66 brix, involves a 50:1 reduction. Meaning it takes 50 gallons of raw sap to produce one gallon of syrup. That much water vapor inside will peel wallpaper and leave a sticky residual everywhere. Even so, boiling five gallons on the stove puts four gallons of water in the house. Best to evaporate as much as possible outdoors. The kitchen vent, fans and open door help as much as they can.

In the end he bottled enough for holiday gifts next year. Already he started to think about that shiny evaporator at the Amish supply store and wondered if he could fight the urge to mark a lot more trees with an orange “M”.