Okay, the thread title is a little misleading. After reading the thread about the maple trees turned into a basketball court, I thought I'd post about going from maple tree to maple syrup. We get plenty of honey from our bee hives but I've always wanted to try making some maple syrup. We tried unsuccessfully boiling a coffee can of sap on an open fire over 50 years ago when we were kids.
We tried again last year with a better setup and more success. This year we had six taps, two in each of three trees. Over the course of the summer, I scrounged firewood in the woods by my house, but most came cutoffs from a couple of construction sites. We used 4 and 5 gallon food grade buckets and I made roofs using aluminum sheet. We boiled in 6 inch deep steam table pans(that was my big $50 purchase for the season) on a woodstove in the back yard. It was lots of fun being outside on cold nights near a warm stove, watching the stars and waiting for the thermometer to hit 219. It was also tiring staying up till 2 or 3 am, but the end result was 4 gallons of super delicious homemade maple syrup. I've probably already gained a couple of pounds between pancakes, french toast, honey maple molasses candy and cookies.