From the 10 taps I have around town I've collected 21 gallons of sap, which should give me anywhere from 1-3 quarts of syrup depending on what sap to syrup ratio our Moscow trees have. My guess is that it will be closer to 2.5 quarts. But fear not Palouse Maple Syrup Cooperative members, this is only the first boil down of the season. With luck we will have a few more stretches of inversion type weather giving us some good runs on sap.
Just so you know, if we don't end up having any more good sap weather the amount of actual syrup available for purchase will be quite small. In the range of 1/2 pint per co-op member, but that's just the risk you run when making maple syrup and part of the reason that it's become so expensive over the last few years- namely the lack of good sap flow weather in the northeast and northern midwest and the faster transition to warmer tempuratures. So keep your fingers crossed for frost!
in a certified kitchen but most of the boiling needs to be
done outdoors or you will most likely be kissing your
wall paper goodbye!
MORE ON TAPPING.....
Recently I had to the pleasure to be featured in the Feb. 10th edition of the Moscow Pullman Daily News in a front page article by Kelli Hadley called "Tap for the Sap." It was quite a surprise and a pleasure to be on the front page. It was an informative, accurate and very well written piece but it seems to have stirred something of a small controversy. The City of Moscow today sent out a press release forbidding anyone to tap any tree growing in a city right of way, and I have been told that this is the last time I will tap maple trees on campus for our grounds shop spring pancake feed since those trees are indeed in a city right of way. The city also noted in their press release that they disagreed with the statement in the article saying tapping is harmless to maple trees. And that it can indeed do harm especially to stressed trees.
Well, yes tapping can harm maple trees if done improperly. That's exactly why I follow the "best tapping" practices laid out by Cornell University, why I don't tap stressed, diseased or heavily damaged trees, and why I use 1/4 inch spiles instead of other commercial spiles which can be up to 1/2 an inch in diameter. It helps perhaps to think of tapping maple trees like giving blood or milking a cow. Taking blood from someone with diabetes will certainly cause damage or death, and freshening a cow or goat suffering from chronic ketosis (muscle wasting) may harm or even kill them. These are both practices done every day all over the country that generally do no present risk, but can in rare instances.
Tapping a tree properly and safely niether benefits nor harms the tree in the long term, and it has indeed been done for decades and decades on intergenerational sugarbushes. The trees on my sugarbush in Wisconsin and all my friends sugarbushes are healthy vibrant and entirely unharmed despite being tapped nearly every year. So, if you have any questions at all about how I tap or the methodology I use please feel free to contact me. Untill then we will all just have to keep looking forward to the delicious taste of condensed local sunshine. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and give another inversion or two before the end of the season. Keep your fingers crossed!
