Syruping

Over the weekend Jeremy and I went syruping in the Quaker Community Forest. This is a piece of land in Wisconsin past Monomonie.

Crossing the field climbing up the hill to where the syruping is:



The trees are tapped like this, with a tube either feeding into a large container like this:



Or sometimes running in various tubes down the hillside and dripping into this huge tub:



We kept these three pans full of sap, boiling away:





Maple syrup is made at a 40 to 1 ratio: 40 gallons of maple tree sap make one gallon of syrup. So we had to keep the fires burning and the sap boiling all day long.




There were a ton of dogs along for the day, but they weren't much help:






Jeremy and I took a brief break after lunch and I thought I'd climb a tree:



After boiling all day, we filled up jars with "half way there" syrup. Everyone took some home to boil it down even more. And voila! Maple Syrup.