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esshup,
We are trying to keep it on a small scale. My 7th grade son wanted a way to raise some money. It all sounded good to him, just run around collect sap, tend the outdoor fire enclosure after school and on Saturdays and he could make money! We are about 2 weeks in and have had wonderful weather conditions compared to last year. Warm days and cold nights, well until we had a little warm spell earlier this week. But hardly any flow today even though really good conditions. It will get cold/rain/snow this weekend and we probably will call it quits early next week.
My father in law lives down the road. He tapped 20 spiles on about a dozen trees, we tapped probably 20-25 more trees on our property using about 40 more spiles? Last year we did about half that many but had a very short collecting season.
Our outdoor fire pit goes OK, but we cheat and do some of the work on a 6 burner commercial gas stove that I have in my basement. We do the finishing in the basement (or on the kitchen stove). We don't have a fancy sugar meter or anything, just shoot for 218 or 219 degrees and call it good.
We leave doors and windows open in the downstairs for good air flow, yet, we found out our carbon monoxide detector does work as one day the air circulation wasn't so ideal with a lot of burners on the big commercial stove going to town for too long. Those things must be super sensitive which is a good thing!
So I think we are up to about 8 or 9 gallons total. We have a couple gallons to finish tonight. If we end up with a dozen gallons that would be fabulous and a big success for our little operation. If it is true that it is 40 gallons of sap to one gallon maple syrup then somehow we boiled off 480 gallons ?? My wife puts final product in pint jars and seals the lids by putting the full jars in the oven like she does when she is canning produce. This way they can stay stored on the shelf for quite a while.
I sell them to folks at my work for $10 a pint so do the math, my son can make a nice chunk of money. Of course we don't charge him for the expensive stainless steel boiling pan, the pre-heat pans, the buckets and lids we collect in, the spiles and tubing, the pint jars and lids, etc etc.
By this week he is getting slower at collecting and it is feeling a little more like work! Imagine farmers who have to get up and do the chores EVERY DAY!!
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