Thursday 1 May 2014

Snapshot Muse #16 - Maple Syrup

 Pure, sweet homemade goodness!

My sister, Sonia loves to tap Maple trees, collect sap and make syrup. This year, for whatever reason, maple sapping didn't go so well for most people who do this every spring. Was it because of the long, cold winter we just had? Quite possible. The sap flow was slow to begin with and the season rather short. Thus she collected only eighty gallons of sap, which yielded three gallons of syrup.

Maple Syrup season always takes me back to my childhood, reading the 'Little House on the Prairie' books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. They were some of my favourite stories. One day, back then we had a group of USA retirees, traveling by Airstream trailers, come for a tour of our colony. One couple was Alan and Leona Bullock from St. Louise, Missouri. We ended up being pen pals for many years after. One year for Christmas they sent me the book "Little House of the Prairie', telling me it reminded them of our way of life. I still have the book - tattered and torn from years of being loved adds to it's charm.

Without further ado, enjoy "Maple Syrup' via You Tube:




4 comments:

  1. Kathy Waldner1 May 2014 at 08:41

    Linda,
    Do you know how she filters her maple syrup? We used a hydrometer this year to check if the sugar content is high enough in our syrup for it to actually be classed as syrup so haven't found the perfect filtering solution. It's harder to filter with the thicker viscosity. Yesterday, an old pro who used to collect sap as a child in Nova Scotia told me that you couldn't filter the thicker stuff but I'm wondering if he's right.

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  2. Sonia uses a milk filter. She doesn't check for sugar content.

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  3. How does a milk filter compare with a coffee filter?

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  4. A milk filter is not paper. It's a stiff and dense kind of material...hmmmm, hard to describe and I can't even think of anything to compare it with. In any case, I think a thick cotton cloth would work just as well.

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