It's Maple Syrup Season

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Although the weather this week was brutally interrupted by a major snow storm, we did manage to get a couple of days of 6 degree C temperatures. This meant that our sap started to run. It also means we discovered the drawbacks of our new systems.

First the small plastic buckets and spyles proved unreliable. For one reason or another they fell off the trees.

The problem with small plastic buckets: they "fly" off

We were so frustrated with this that we decided to take all of these and replace them with our original system (ie. last year's home made solution): commercial water containers. The benefit is also no contaminants in our sap.

We now have a few spare plastic buckets and spyles. So if anyone locally wishes to use these to tap a backyard tree with the kids, feel free to drop by the farm we're ready to give them away.

Our old system is much more reliable.

The large containers we used to tap multiple trees at a time also proved difficult to work with. When the temperature turned warm, the land was extremely soft and muddy. The result is that we could not safely take the tractor into the bush and had to carry 20 litre pails out of the tree line. Weighing some 20 kg. (or close to 45 lbs), this proved rather difficult.

In fact this problem was greatly aggravated following the snow storm. We had to resort to "old fashioned" concepts: snow shoes and a sled. We felt like arctic explorers!

On our way to collect sap in the pristine snow.

So far, we have actually been able to gather quite a large amount of maple sap. To the point where we expect to simmer our first batch of syrup this coming week.

Last year our syrup had some "maple sand", crystals formed from the mineral content of the sap in the trees. This year we decided to pre-filter all our sap using commercially available felt filters. We had to do this anyway given the contaminants accrued in the small plastic buckets. Hopefully this will reduce the mineral content in our final product.

Large felt filters used for the maple sap.

The weather also gave us a chance to finish our pruning. This included a small Crab Apple tree where Chef demonstrated is monkey-like tree climbing skills.

Chef demonstrating his tree climbing skills.

The other effort in pruning revolved around the Yellow Raspberries. These produced very well this year, although we had just planted them in the Spring. We were quite perturbed about their behaviour. They seem to have enjoyed the soil which was originally the base to an old chicken coop (hence loaded with a great fertilizer). The result is that the canes grew almost like trees, one major stalk and multiple branches. In fact, some of the stalks reached almost an inch in diameter.

Yellow Raspberries: how and what do you prune on something like this?

With our other Raspberries, we had become accustomed to simply cutting the canes that fruited and pruning (cutting back to chest height) the new canes. The new canes provide us with fruit the following year. In this case, the first year growth provided a significant amount of fruit (at the end of all branches). We eventually decided to cut these back completely. Hopefully they will continue to produce this year since the Yellow Raspberry has become one of our favourites.

I'll end this week by posting a picture of the Tea Room and barn after the latest snow fall. When this all melts, we will have quite a mess on our hands!