I love seeing metal buckets and blue bags hanging on trees around town this time of year! Those bags are the symbol of two things I love dearly: Spring + Maple Syrup!

I’ve noticed that these buckets and bags have been multiplying in recent years! I hope the trend continues, because maple sugaring is such a simple way to forage your own food, reduce your carbon footprint, add nutrients to your sweetener—all while adding another homesteading skill to your list. Bonus: there’s very little that can go wrong; it just takes some time.

*This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links.*

Drill In!

The maple sugaring process is easier than you think. And I’m sharing tips on how to make the process smooth like Sunday morning (pancakes).

Tool Time

A Spile (#1) gets ‘tapped’ into the tree, and brings the sap outside so you can collect it. There are a few different ways to collect sap, but for most backyard enthusiasts, sap sacks or buckets are the way to go. We use this 3-part sack system. You wrap the blue bags (#2) around the collars (#3) and slide into the holder (#4). There’s a hole in holder that fits tight to the notch in the spile. Once you get the sap sacks on, be sure to tug down to make sure the bags are nice and tight (I’ve had one bag get full and work its way off—lesson learned after one bag!). Some people have a hose running right from the spile to a closed bucket, but for us these sap sacks work great.

You can find my favorite maple sugaring tools on my Amazon page!

The only ‘modification’ we’ve had to make is because of the squirrels. One year they must have gotten a taste of the sap and wanted more, so they chewed a hole in the bottom corner of a sack! Saddest sap collection morning ever. So we took a page from the squirrel vs. bird feeder wars and put coconut oil and cayenne pepper on the outside bottom ridge of the bag. After that, they never bothered the bags again.

Tips and Tricks

We’ve been tapping our maple tree for nine years now, learning something new each season. Mostly, each sap run is SO DIFFERENT, and that is definitely part of what makes it so fun!

Some things we’ve figured out so far:

• Each tree is different. Our tree gets her juices flowing later than most—a true late bloomer.

• We are wood-fire lovers and will forever boil sap with a wood fire source.

• Wood ash in your sap doesn’t affect the final flavor …much.

• Straining sap through cheesecloth, or a ‘maple sap filter,’
  helps keep the final product clear.

• Our one big old maple tree with two taps in it *almost* yields enough syrup for our family of four for an entire year.

But by far the coolest and trickiest thing about maple sugaring we’ve learned so far is how to condense maple sap without ALL the boiling…

Freeze Maple Sap Before Boiling

Using the “Freeze then Fire” Technique

We collect the sap in sacks and pour that off into 5 gallon buckets, then use our chest freezer (or just leave it outside if it’s dropping below freezing) to freeze overnight or longer. After freezing, we transfer the frozen sap to a ‘draining bucket’ (another 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom) and let that sit at room temperature until about a third of it has melted. The melted portion has dripped through to the bottom bucket (usually ready by evening if we take it out in the morning)—that’s the precious sugary portion. 

Toss the still frozen ice outside and put the condensed sap back in the freezer for a repeat freeze-thaw cycle, this time keeping the first half of the melted liquid.  The result should be a liquid that has increased from 1–3% sugar to 5–16% sugar. This means a MUCH shorter boil time!

Tip: I use a wine corkscrew to screw into the frozen sap and lift it out of the bucket!

Sweet Success

I love this method because it allows us to hold large amounts of sap all together even if the weather gets too warm to keep it outside. It also helps with sap flow starts and stops and not losing any sap to getting too warm for too long. *You’ll know your sap has turned if it starts to look cloudy. This happens if the sap is held above 40 F for very long. We had to toss two full buckets our first year; it was heartbreaking!

Tap those Trees!

Yes, you can tap other trees besides maple trees.

All maple trees have the potential for syrup, with Sugar Maples coming in with the highest sugar content in aw sap—2.0%. Our Silver Maple is estimated to have about 1.7% sugar content. Other native Midwest trees that can be tapped include box elder and paper birch. There are lots of trees that can be tapped depending on where you are; here’s the LINK to the best list I’ve found so far.

I’ll also throw out there that apartment and condo dwellers can ask their associations if they can tap trees on the land surrounding their spaces. How about a Spring Syrup Social to bring us out of hibernation!

Why So Sappy?

Basically, it is the freeze-thaw cycle that gets the tree’s internal pressure pumping. Specifically, according to Botanics in the Kitchen article,

“Three primary processes can cause xylem sap to flow:  transpiration, root pressure and stem pressure.” Umm, have I mentioned I love nature lately?!

Time to Gear Up for Maple Sugaring

Lots of places have equipment for collecting sap, ranging from your simple taps, brackets, and bags to buckets and tubing galore. My online pick is Tap My Trees. Locally, Fleet Farm and Egg|Plant Urban Farm Supply have got you covered. Egg|Plant has great staff that will talk you through any specific questions!

Want to see what tools I use? I rounded up my favorite Maple Sugaring tools on my Amazon page.

We love our maple sap for so many reasons… Pancakes taste better and my Crunchiest Granola Recipe wouldn’t be the same (or as cost effective) without homemade maple syrup. We also bake with it often, and use it to sweeten tea. And there are so many other trace elements and benefits to be found in that bottle of liquid sugar.

Burn Baby Burn

But first you do have to boil the heck out of it! Making syrup from sap means condensing sap in a ratio of about 40:1. That means it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Like I said, lots of boiling! We started with a very rudimentary setup (it looks ridiculous in the photo, but it worked for us. We burn wood that would otherwise sit around rotting, and we put basically no money into the blocks or stand (we use old shelving standards for cross pieces). It is not the most efficient way to do things, but it is the way that makes us happy, and the kids LOVE keeping the fire going!

We always finish off boiling the sap down inside on the stovetop. We go by a consistency and temperature reading from a candy thermometer. You want to aim for 7 degrees above boiling, so we shoot for 219F.

Professionals will tell you it is not syrup unless you can tell the brix (sugar content) is at 66%. But I’m simply too cheap to buy a hydrometer, and my taste buds thoroughly enjoy anything close to 66% sugar content in my maple syrup. I do store mine in the freezer, and it sometimes freezes a little… also a sign of less than perfect sugar content. Again, my taste buds never complain and it stays fresh a full year out.

Sweet Homestead Skill

My advice with maple sugaring is to start small, because once you collect it you have to boil it. Kind of like with all things homesteading, talking with someone who has done this before if you have questions along the way helps you take that first step. And I’m all about taking that first step; whether it’s drilling into your first tree or digging into your first garden. Ask away if you have any questions. Another great online community is the Facebook Group: Minnesota Maple Syrup Makers, just ask to join if you’re interested. This is a fun process, but it does take time to boil all that sap down!

Drill In,
Michelle

The post Syrup in the City: Maple Sugaring DIY appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

In case you’re not quite there, hang with me for a minute. Ramps, mushrooms, fiddleheads (the still unfurled fern) and the elusive wild asparagus are all Spring favorites of the Minnesota forager. Berry season is another bountiful blessing. If you want to look at some beautiful ‘found’ eats check out this Pinterest page! Now, that’s the kind of page I could get lost on.

Ground Rules of foraging: respect private land, find out if the public land you’re on allows foraging, sustainable harvesting and to find out what if any chemicals have been sprayed.

For our cozy little time together let’s tackle the savory, short lived ramp; AKA ramsons or wild leek. You know you’re cool when you have three names.

I’ve known about the patch of ramps in my parent’s woods for years, I remember I dug one up decades ago and was utterly confused because they looked like an onion but smelled like garlic and were not so great raw. Turns out they’re the trendy hipster cousin to the onion now in high demand. I usually steer clear of trends (I’ve finally learned my lesson, thank you 1980’s) but these potent little pearls have me jumping on the spring foraging bandwagon. These alliums are taking over the foodie world again this Spring and my kitchen will smell like ramps for the foreseeable future.

What exactly are we talking about here? They are in the allium family, meaning onion. And what they lack in size, they make up for in smell. You can sometimes locate them by smell just as well as sight, but they are some of the earliest greenery popping up from forest floors each Spring.

credit: MinnesotaWildFlowers.info

credit: MinneostaWildFlowers.info

Here’s a close up from the Minnesota Wild Flowers website, showing the flowers and later season seeds. I’ve heard the seeds will take hold if given a loamy deciduous woods home.

Minnesota Wild Flowers   is such a great site. Within each of the listings you can add info on where/when/how many plants you spotted, helping to build a living breathing network of plant life. Fun way to be part of something bigger!

Please, let’s be smart and practice sustainable harvesting of these little guys. There are two ways to go about this: either taking only 10% of a found ramp field or leaving roots intact. You can leave the roots intact by digging down around the ramp leaves, and then cutting where the bulb fattens, so you leave the bottom of the bulb and roots in the ground.

That way you’ll be able to come back the next year and harvest again, and again, and again! Once harvested, get them cool ASAP- I found that a plastic bag (thank you Target) rolled up in the fridge works for a day or so. Past 48 hours and I’ve got no data for you, they have yet to last longer than that in our kitchen.

Since ramps are rocking at the same time as asparagus, and in my case grow about 100 feet apart, it’s only natural that I’d want them to co-mingle their flavors. This is the epitome of simple, local, healthy, flavorful food!

Planting our asparagus patch was one of the best additions to our veggie situation, early perennial vegetables add weeks to our local eating every Spring.

I never follow specific recipes (that’s why my baking is hit or miss!), I’ll just say to go easy on the ramps, you don’t need many to turn up the flavor of eggs, potatoes, pork, or as my ‘faux recipe’ below shows; asparagus.

Heat olive oil over med-high heat in cast iron skillet.

Chop asparagus stems (look how fat yet still tender & juicy ours were) throw them in to sear for a few minutes.

Then add asparagus tops and let them sizzle for a few more minutes.

Then add whole ramps, letting them get roasty so they can show off some smoky flavors.

Devour as soon as the steam allows.

Adding a few chopped ramp stalks to eggs in the morning has even chipped away at my chive love.

I’m going to have to gather some more leaves only (not even digging into the ground) and try the Ramp Salt Recipe at the end of this  article from Carstens Smith, writing for the Star Tribune.

There are ample posts about the uber-love of ramps, including these from Wild Edible and Eater. This is one trend that I hope stand the test of time.

Have you foraged for any food before, for ramps? Want to try it now?

I dare you to dig in this summer and forage at least one food!

Michelle

The post Finding Treasure in Foraged Food appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.