I made maple sugar for cinnamon rolls — pour a bunch of maple syrup (a pint, in this case) into a pot. Preferably a pot with high walls so the whole thing doesn’t bubble over in a hot, sticky mess. Over medium heat, boil for 15-20 minutes. It’ll foam up a lot, and all of a sudden it will crystalize on top. Pull it off the heat and stir to break up the hardened maple.
We’re in for a drastic temperature drop this week — 70 degrees one day, 27 the next night. We’ve covered our hops before; but, as the plants spread out, they get harder to cover.
This year, we built a quick (temporary) greenhouse over the entire hop bed. Rebar and longer metal poles are pounded into the ground at an angle, and the 1″ PVC that I had for the low tunnel greenhouse is mounted to the poles. A large sheet of greenhouse plastic covers the entire bed, and a lot of bricks are (hopefully) holding it all in place. This should keep our new hops from freezing.
We got fifteen full pints and a partial pint (plus a cup that Scott took out to enjoy early) of late-season maple syrup in our third batch. That gives us five and a half gallons of syrup this year — and we’ve got about eight more trees that we can tap next year.
The big sugar maple in our front yard has budded out — no more sap from it this year!
18 pints in our second batch!
We canned the first batch of maple syrup today — 10 pints
Sap is boiling! We tapped about thirteen trees so far, and collected about 20 gallons of sap today.
Months from having any residents … but our hive arrived!
Bit of research in preparation for next year — I’m thinking Narragansett turkeys — they’ve got some dark quills (so aren’t the ‘perfect’ commercial turkey), but they’re great foragers and make more turkeys all by themselves (sadly, this is not something many commercially bred animals can do). They’re also pretty cool looking!
Our first egg! From the green queen … since that’s the only one who lays green eggs/
