Posted in Miscellaneous Matters

It is officially syrup-making season around here!  In fact, last Sunday was Maine Maple Sunday.  For anyone not familiar with this particular delightful tradition, I'll explain.  You see, we Mainers really like our maple syrup, so much so that we have an annual holiday to celebrate it!  Many sap houses across the state are open to visitors, offering tours of sugar shacks and sap lines, maple products, lunch items and other fun and delicious treats.  It is a perfect excuse to get out of the house after a cold winter; sap season means spring is just around the corner!

The weather lately has been perfect to keep that sap running.  Cool nights (mid 20s or below) and warm days (above 40 degrees) are just right for a good flow of sap into the buckets or down the lines.  We have been busily gathering our sap, and at this point we have several large barrells full and waiting to be boiled down into syrup.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make just 1 gallon of maple syrup.  That means a lot of sap gathering, and a lot of boiling!  My husband spent some time last weekend sitting in the sap shack, boiling away, and he has many, many more hours ahead of him.  The older three children have been gathering sap buckets, collecting all the syrup each day.  My job comes at the end, when the sap is boiled into syrup and I "finish it off" on our stovetop (which simply means to boil it a little bit longer to get it to just the right consistency), then I put it into canning jars.

It really is a fun process, and I love the fact that the entire family is involved.  The rewards of gallons of delicious maple syrup are quite nice, too.  And of course, it makes for a great homeschooling project!