That is a beautiful sight. Liked the story on the journey of the farm. Nice to see you have a little Georgia on the walls.
Woodsman I wonder if the light color of your sap is due to you being on ledge and rock? Have you ever thought about this.
Not familiar with how the color goes, just remember the 40/1 ratio. I thought the more water you boiled off off the darker it gets???
Certainly could be a part of it. Our sugar content hovers around 1.5% so we are typically always seeing a 60/1. You’ve got me curious now if the mineral content in the ground that’s being utilized by the trees is perhaps lessened due to thinner soils and more rocky terrain on the hill.
Color is slightly influence by the caramelization of the sugars in the sap as you’re boiling away at it. But most of the color in the final product has to do with the levels of bacteria present in the sap before boiling. Bacteria is going to occur natural at tap holes and will always be present. The amount present and I’m sure the type present has a great impact on the color. This is why syrups tend to start out light at the beginning of the season and end up darker towards the end. As the days get warmer and the tap holes have been open longer, more bacteria in the sap is present, thus, a darker syrup. Mineral content of the ground does play a slight part as well.
my gramps brothers had Sugar houses, and we collected by buckets and you did it in sections. I always noticed that the section that we called the ledges produced, fancy, grade A syrup.. The 1st pint or so it always gets stuck on the kitchen table with 15 spoons around it so you could taste a new batch.. Also a gallon or 2 was always pulled from 2nd pan to can for babies that got colic.
Very nice. Mum grew up on a farm where they produced molasses; she use to tell me of her jobs when she was a child working with the family to earn a living. I popped over and visited your website. I have been thinking of growing mushrooms here; sort of tired of dealing with servers.
Mushrooms are a lot of fun but a lot of work. But you still get to harvest woods and spend time out in the wood innoculating logs and force fruiting. This spring, in just a couple months, all our hard work will come to a head. Hoping for an awesome first harvest from our cold weather strain logs and then a full summers worth of harvests from our wide range strain logs. Highly recommend trying it out!
Well look at that. About time, now I can sub your thread vs finding and mostly missing your posts haha.
It's in his sig, in orange text as it is clickable (might be a different color depending on what skin you're using here)
Good thread Woodsman. Sounds like a very nice piece of property once you cleaned it up. Does the warmer year give you a lesser yield on syrup? Had to cut a large Black Birch out of my yard a couple years ago. Stump ran like crazy. Got me thinking about syrup. Did some reading on the subject. I’m sure you know what I read LOL. Still it would be interesting g and different to make syrup from BB.
Warmer temps overall can definitely shorten the season. If it stays warm enough for long enough the trees will think about putting out buds. That’d be the end of the season for sure. At that point the sap takes on a bitter taste and doesn’t make good syrup. Also need nights to go below freezing to create a pressure difference in the trunks of the maple trees that allows the sap to flow strong. Days above freezing. Nights below. That’s the ideal. If it doesn’t fall below freezing at night, a good run will slow down and eventually stop after a couple nights like that. Last night it got down to 32.4° here. Sap lines didn’t freeze up. Run is still on. So it’s been going for over 24 hours straight now. Looks like about the same temperature overnight tonight. So tomorrow it’ll probably be down to a crawl. As things are shaping up, I’m glad I tapped when I did. Caught some really great early sap runs. There’s another producer a few miles down the road that just tapped this past weekend. I think his season will be very short. Looks like it may push 50° again next week. Even warmer out of the hills here. I’ve been thinking a ton lately about tapping some black birch later this spring when the BB flow is on. Experiment with it and test out the final product. Lot of mixed opinions and reviews on it. I’ve never had it so I’m curious to try. I’d love to stock a specialty product like that in the farm stand. Even if it sells slowly, having variety to offer is nice.
as I remember it’s not a pancake type syrup. Used mostly for meats. What I saw on the web they get big money for it. A lot of work too. Your right tho. Even if people don’t buy it just seeing it as an option will stick in their heads
Was up on the hill earlier marking some beech trees in the 6-8” range that have signs of bark disease. I plan to harvest a few of them this coming week and haul them down in 3 foot lengths to the mushroom yard. Beech bark disease has no negative effects on shiitake production in beech logs. Didn’t get many beech logs into the yard last year. A few but not many. This year I’m looking to do about half beech. Some trials have shown beech to be more productive in producing shiitake mushrooms than does oak. We’ll see how it performs for me. It was so quiet in the woods today outside of the bitter cold breeze on top of the hill. Out of no where a snow squal came in. Lasted maybe 20 minutes and was so peaceful. I also came across a couple piles of moose droppings and some tracks. Perhaps not so exciting for some of you north of here, but it has always greatly excited me how my property plays a small part in the greater overall picture of the very small CT moose population. This is my 6th winter here since buying the property and all but one winter, last year, moose have used the property through until mid- spring time. Mostly I see the tracks and the piles of droppings. I’ve seen beds in the snow. 15 foot tall striped maple saplings bent over and broken with the buds eaten off. Have put eyes on a bull/cow pair twice which is still two of my most memorable wildlife experiences. They seem to do a great job at avoiding the cameras I have out but every now and again I get a few pictures. They’re never very good. Here’s a couple from a set one camera picked up this past week. And a couple from past years. Just wanted to share. Here’s the best picture I’ve got off the cameras - a small bull from May of 2018. Notice the buds. A not so great pic from 2017.
Looking great, buddy! And I love this idea.....a personal post to keep track of your hoarding adventures, and update as you go along! Keep on hoarding, stay warm and be safe!
Very cool thread! And I like the farm you have; just looked at your website. I worked up in the Northwest Corner for a number of years.
thats cool! Id love to see one in person. We had one here in North Haven few years back. Crossed route 22 almost across from us. Such a big thing it made the channel 30 news Moose Sighting In North Haven