Sugaring Off: making our own syrup from sap!

I'm basically Laura Ingalls.

My dad found out last summer that you could make syrup from the sap of a box elder tree.  He immediately told me, because my house and yard are lousy with box elder bugs.  I took some time in the fall to confirm that the tree inside my chicken coop is, in fact, a box elder, which tree belongs to the maple family . . . who knew?

So I bought a book (2016 review #2) and some "spiles" and waited for the right conditions: temperatures warming up to the 40s during the day, and dropping below freezing at night.  We had three weeks of such weather from the end of February to the beginning of March.

I could probably still get some sap out of my tree, but after three weeks of "sugaring off," I'm beat.  We got two quarts of syrup.  I took the spiles out of the tree and will wait till the sap run next year to do it again.

I can't think of making maple syrup without thinking of The Little House books.  It was fun to do what I have read about dozens of times.

They could eat all they wanted, for maple syrup never hurt anybody. There was plenty of syrup in the kettle, and plenty of snow outdoors. As soon as they ate one plateful, they filled their plates with snow again, and Grandma poured more syrup on it…They all ate till they could hold no more, and then they began to dance again. 

My spile kit from Amazon

I measured the girth of my tree at four feet high.
More than 24 inches around means I could have
three or four spiles.

It was so much fun!

And so delicious!  The doughnuts were definitely my favorite.

Nature's goodness.