By Jan H. Kennedy
FPS correspondent
April 14, 2009
 |
| TAPPING THE TREE. Jan Kennedy taps a tree and installs the spout so syrup can flow from a maple tree on his property. |
ROSE TWP. - You don’t have to be crazy to make maple syrup, but by the time you finish reading this article, any doubts about my mental health will be fully removed.
I’ve just finished my last collection of maple sap and taken down all of the buckets, spiles and plastic hoses. For the uninitiated, spiles are those thingies you plug into the maple tree. A plastic hose attaches to the spile and runs down and through a hole in the top side of my 5-gallon buckets.
Sap collecting season runs from about the middle of February until mid- or late March, weather cooperating. The optimum time is when the night temperatures are below 32 degrees and daytime temps are above 32 degrees. The freezing and thawing is what builds up pressure within the tree and forces the sap from the roots to the tippy-top of the tree.
Sugar maples have the highest sap yield and the most sugar content. Even then, it takes between 48 and 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Unfortunately, all my trees are red maples, so it takes me about 55 gallons of sap to boil down to a gallon of syrup.
But the work starts long before mid-February. It starts any time you have the time to scour the woods for dead or downed trees. It takes a ton of firewood to boil down 50 gallons of sap. Hours upon hours accumulate with the chain saw cutting wood, then the heavy loading and unloading of the firewood and stacking it and covering it with a tarp to keep it dry.
After a couple of years experimenting with knowledge taught to me by Dave Conrad of Dave and Dave maple syrup fame in Columbiana County, I bought the equipment for 44 taps three years ago, and plenty of half-pint, pint and quart bottles. I bought more equipment the next year, more bottles and some preprinted labels with our company name, J and S Kennedy, Pure Carroll County Maple Syrup. The S is for my son, Sean, who reluctantly inherited my madness. Each year, we produce about five gallons of syrup.
Once we collected the sap, it needs to boil down. Sean cut tops out of two steel 55-gallon barrels in the shapes of the rectangular and round pans we would use for boiling sap. In the side, he cut out a square piece, then attached the piece to the side of the barrel with hinges. That’s where we put in the wood. He cut another opening at the bottom to remove ashes and allow for an updraft.
It was a slow process. I went through a complete National Enquirer book of large crossword puzzles waiting for the level to go down enough in the pans to pour more sap in the pans and continue boiling. Sometimes I’d start at 6 p.m. and see the sun rising when I went to bed in the morning.
This year we decided to expand, buying enough equipment for 102 traps. We also bought a 3-foot by 4-foot stainless steel pan for boiling down the sap. Sean found some metal railing and welded two pieces together the width of the tray. He welded sheet metal around three sides and partially on the fourth, leaving an opening for a cast iron door he confiscated from who knows where. He then welded sheet metal a few inches above the bottom, forming it to raise as it stretched to the back of the “oven.” The fire brick I bought were stacked along the inside of the sheet metal, and a flue pipe was gerry rigged on the back.
This greatly cut down the boiling time, but many hours still were required. We boiled the sap until it was about 80 percent finished, then we put it in a turkey roaster I bought last year to finish it off. Many more hours and a couple tanks of propane added to the expense.
The total cost for just the oven exceeded $500, not counting labor. The cost of extra spiles and bottles added another $90 to the total, and propane added another $60.
This was not a good year for collecting sap. Not enough days when the temps were below and above freezing to keep up the pressure. When I finish my last boil, we’ll have about five gallons of delicious syrup, the same amount I made last year, after all the expense. After giving some away to family, we’ll sell about $300 worth of syrup.
Now we get to the proof of insanity in my family. With about $650 invested, and sales of $300, a deficit pokes its ugly head in my direction. Remember, no labor costs are added in. Nothing for the hours of cutting and hauling wood, or the gas to run the four-wheel motorcycle, the tractor, or the gas and oil for the chain saws, and all the refiling of the chain’s cutting edges.
Why, you must be asking, would I put myself through this year after year? You’ll have to ask me again next year. I’m too pooped to even try to think of an answer that would smack of even the slightest sense of sanity. |
