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In addition to the old-fashioned method of hanging steel buckets, Howell Farm also collects sap from its sugar maples using a system of plastic tubing.
The sap is boiling. About 40 gallons are needed to make 1 gallon of finished syrup.
It’s finally maple syruping season. The first sap of the year—70 gallons—is now flowing into the 400-gallon holding tank in the sugar shack, where it will eventually be boiled down into maple syrup. Those 70 gallons of sap will yield about 2 gallons of finished syrup.
It’s still freezing outside, so Farmer Jim had to make an extra effort to get the sap into liquid form—he heated it over an outside fire. This was necessary to make sure there’s some sap available for boiling during this weekend’s public maple syruping program. Another 80 gallons of syrup sits frozen in an outside collecting tank. Farmer Jim says the syruping season is starting late this year because of the cold weather, but he still expects it to be a good one. He thinks the sap will really start flowing in about a week. |
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The Furrow is the online newsletter of The Friends of Howell Living History Farm. We will be updating this site about once a week with crop reports and other insights into life on a horse-drawn living history farm. Archives
June 2015
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| THE FURROW: The online newsletter of Howell Living History Farm |
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