Make maple syrup from tree to bottle

“We inserted the taps at the end of the first week of January. To start pumping sap, the trees need temperatures below freezing at might and above 40°F during the day. Then, being the 15th month of 2020 or the year that shall remain nameless, we had that insane snowpocalypse where it got down to several degrees below zero and everything came to a screeching halt. We just sat it out, and left everything in situ because we were frankly afraid of damaging things by touching it. We went to check on them a few times, and when it got so cold that the sap froze in the bottle we decided this year would probably be a total loss. We went out about a week after the arctic decided to go back home and woohoo!! The 3 gallon jugs all had about a gallon each in them. Once we combined them all into a large clean, empty carboy, we decided to process it in small batches of 4 gallons or less at a time. [...] I CANNOT stress this enough; have the vent on as high as it will go unless you want everything in the house to be sticky. I actually had to stop part way through to clean the hood, and vent screen because it was collecting syrup droplets. [...] Four-ish gallons of sap cooked down to ten fluid ounces of finished syrup.”

“My husband Dan and his brothers talked. Ed came by with a manual brace drill, a few old spoons, and a couple buckets to tap our first tree. He made a hole in the bark about half an inch deep, inserted the spoon, and bent it to make a hook to hang the plastic pail. Waiting is the hardest part. Every day, the kids checked the buckets. When sap first ran it was a very exciting day. The fellas made an open fire in the middle of the gravel driveway within a circle of firebricks to contain it. Fortunately, we had a very large steel bowl for the sap. We set it over the fire. Our boiling operation was primitive, but by the end of the day, we had syrup. Our first creation, barely a cup.”