There’s nothing better than driving around on a chilly March morning in New England and rolling the windows down (just for a second, because it’s freaking COLD in New England in March). But if you’re driving by a sugar shack and you see the smoke billowing out of the chimney, it’s amazing to take in that smell of maple-infused air–the smell of maple season, baby.

I heartily believe that anyone can make syrup–even if you don’t have maple trees where you live. Did you know that every single state in the U.S. has at least one tappable kind of tree? Read this post for 32 trees that can be tapped for making syrup.

But I know the process of sugaring can be intimidating. I’ve been there.

So let’s break down the process of making maple syrup into a super-simple guide for you. Right here.

If you want the full guide–if you want to join me in my sugarbush and kitchen and walk through all the details together–join Maple Syrup University. The doors are open year-round and you can save big–on top of the already discounted price–with code SOULYRESTED.

Making your own maple syrup is easy-peasy, I promise.

How to make maple syrup, step-by-step

Maple syrup all starts with sap. Sap runs when it freezes at night and warms up during the day. In my area, that usually happens from about mid-to-late February through early April, but that will vary in every region. In order to turn maple sap into syrup, it will need to be boiled down, like, a lot; 40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon of syrup.

Let’s get syruping!

1. Start by identifying your maple trees. While fall is a good time to find your maples, looking for their bright fall leaves, I think sugar maples are easiest to identify in the spring. They have a distinctive bright green foliage that emerges earlier than many other trees, and bonus, without the leaves you can also identify them easily by their branch formation. More about that here: Identify sugar maple trees in the spring.
2. Start tapping at the right time. Once you tap a tree, you generally only have 6 weeks of flowing sap (before the tree starts to heal itself and won’t flow anymore), so you really want to nail the timing. If you tap too soon, you’ll miss the end-of-season flow, and if you tap too late you’ll miss the height of syruping. Learn about tapping your trees at the right time here.
3. Start tapping trees and collecting sap. While there are tons of ways to do this, the simplest way is with traditional taps, lines, and buckets. See my full list of my favorite sugarmaking supplies if you need to stock up on some. Bags can also be used to collect sap, but we prefer buckets because they keep squirrels and other pests out, they hold more sap, and they’re just overall sturdier and easier to use. (More details on how to physically tap your trees are below.) More about deterring squirrels in this article: 6 Ways to Outsmart Squirrels on a Maple Syrup Farm.
4. Collect and filter sap. This step is where an RO filter is amazing because it removes water from the sap but leaves all the sugar–the good stuff–behind, leaving you with about half the amount of sap to boil, saving you so much time and money. Here’s my guide for how to build your own reverse osmosis system. If you don’t want to build an RO machine, go ahead and simply filter your sap through a filter made just for maple sap.
5. Boil your sap outside. It’s important to not start your sap boiling inside, or you’ll have a humid, sticky mess of a kitchen. For an easy, inexpensive beginner set up, I highly recommend a simple propane burner and turkey fryer pans. I link to mine here.
6. Bring your sap inside to finish boiling. Try to not bring it in too soon, but you’ll want to closely monitor the syrup as it gets close to being able to bottle as it can boil over with only a second’s notice. (p.s. if your syrup does start to boil over, quickly drop a dollop of butter into your pan–it will make the syrup go down and stop boiling over.) You’ll know you’re close enough to bring the syrup in when a candy thermometer starts getting close to 170-ish to 180-ish degrees. Or, I highly recommend reading the sugar content (“brix”) and bringing in your syrup when it’s around 60 brix. This article explains a lot more about measuring brix and what tools you need to make syrup.
7. Filter your hot sap/almost syrup again at this point, when you’re transferring the syrup from the outside turkey fryer pot to the inside stock pot. And whatever you do, don’t try to DIY it with an old t-shirt or coffee filters. Trust me on this one. This filter and pre-filter set are a great option.
8. Bottle it (and filter again). Boil your sap inside until it reaches 219 degrees. We also use a refractometer at this stage to measure the sugar content of the syrup before bottling–ideally syrup will be 66% sugar content. When it’s reading perfectly, work quickly to filter the syrup again (prefilters are your best friend here, trust me!), then bottle it in clean, sterilized jars fitted with new (unused) canning lids and tightly fitted bands. Make sure to work quickly here so the syrup is still hot when it’s poured into jars. If it’s not, simply reheat it on the stove before bottling. If you reheat your syrup for bottling, just be sure to keep the temperature under 190, or you’ll need to filter it again.
9. Let the syrup cool, make sure the lids seal, and store your liquid gold away (at room temperature–it’s totally shelf stable without any canning) for future use.
10. Pull your taps when the season ends. This is easily identified when either the sap stops flowing or flows very slowly, your sap turns cloudy quickly during the day, and/or when it stops freezing at night and buds show up on the trees. Details about knowing when to stop tapping trees here.
11. Pat yourself on the back, because you just made real maple syrup from scratch! Now enjoy the fruits of your labor.

How to install taps into maple trees to make maple syrup

If this is the first time the tree has been tapped, choose a location about 36 inches off the ground. If the tree has been tapped before, find the tap hole. Then move about 4 inches over and a few inches up, and drill this year’s hole. Remove any loose bark or other debris, then, in one smooth motion, drill about 1.5 inches into the tree. Now install your tap. It’s best to use an actual hammer, and tap lightly, not ram it in by banging it with the end of your drill which can cause the hole to crack and sap to leak over time… not saying I know this from personal experience or anything *cough*. Now attach your tubing to your tap.

If you’re having trouble fitting your tubing onto your taps, try carrying a thermos of warm water with you, sticking the end of the tubing into it as needed to soften it just enough to make it slide onto the tap easier.

A general rule is that trees 10-17″ in diameter get one tap, 18-24″ get 2, and 25″+ can handle 3 taps.

Why is filtering maple sap important when I make maple syrup?

Filtering maple sap at all the stages of making maple syrup is really important for a few reasons.

• To remove natural debris–not only is getting a bit of leaf or pine needle in your syrup unpleasant, it actually impacts the flavor of your syrup in a major way. And it’s not a good way.
• If you’re using an evaporator to boil your syrup, it’s really important to keep the sap you’re pouring into it as clean as humanly possible so you don’t clog anything up.
• Filtering sap to remove debris and microorganisms in the sap help the syrup keep on the shelf for longer and not mold, as well as protect the integrity of the grade of syrup.
• Most importantly, filtering removes niter from the syrup (also called “sugar sand”). If you’ve ever made a batch of “crunchy” syrup, you know what I’m talking about. Unfiltered syrup will contain niter, which floats around in the bottom of your jar and adds an unpleasant taste and texture. It’s best to filter your syrup well to avoid the niter issue. In fact, I often take a taste of the syrup that clings to my cone filter after I get through bottling just to remind myself how important filtering is–the leftover syrup/niter mixture in the filter is bitter, gritty, and off-putting.

When is homemade maple syrup ready to bottle?

Maple syrup is ready to bottle when a candy thermometer reads 219 degrees, and a refractometer reads 66 brix.

Do I need to can homemade maple syrup?

Nope! As long as your syrup is 180-190 degrees when it’s bottled and your lids seal, water bath canning your homemade syrup is not only not needed, but it can actually harm your syrup. When you place the jars of syrup into hot water, you cause niter to reform in your syrup, which will give all your hard work a bitter flavor and gritty texture. Nobody wants that.

The fact is, even if your maple syrup wasn’t canned or sealed, it’s technically safe to store at room temperature, to a certain extent. The extremely high sugar content makes it pretty hard for bad bacteria to grow in your syrup. I do store opened jars of syrup in the fridge just to be safe, but some folks choose to leave it at room temperature. If your opened jar of maple syrup did develop some mold on top, you can simply skim the mold off, heat the syrup up to 180-190 degrees, and use as usual.

Also, the container you use matters. According to this article, glass canning jars have been found to store maple syrup “almost indefinitely,” while cheap plastic containers allow oxygen into the syrup and may only maintain the quality of the syrup for 3-6 months. Big difference.

Most importantly, using a refractometer and closely monitoring the brix of your syrup will help keep your syrup free of bacteria. (More about how to measure the Brix, or sugar content, here.) Hot pack canning syrup under 66 brix isn’t as safe, since the water content will be higher and the syrup will not only be likely to ferment, but the higher water content will also be more likely to allow molds and bacteria to grow. However, keep in mind that anything over 68 brix will be likely to form sugar crystals.

From start to finish, careful monitoring and intentional cleanliness plays a huge role in keeping your syrup safe and free from bacteria, regardless of your storage methods.

How to substitute maple syrup for sugar in any recipe

Now that we’ve covered all the basics of how to make your own maple syrup, now for the fun part–how to use it!

When replacing cane sugar with maple syrup in recipes, here are my favorite tips to give people.

1. Replace 1 cup cane sugar with 2/3 – 3/4 cup maple syrup.
2. Remove about 3 tablespoons of liquid from your recipe.
3. Finally, reduce your oven temperature by 25 degrees.

You’re now on your way to making and enjoying the best sweetener nature has to offer. Go here for more about baking with maple syrup & a handy conversion chart.

Want to go more in-depth on how to make maple syrup?

I really wanted to make this post simple, beginner friendly and helpful for getting started making your own maple syrup from scratch. But if you’re ready to level up your maple skills, I’d love to have you join me in Maple Syrup University, where we talk about all things maple syrup in-depth. Use code SOULYRESTED and you can save a sweet penny too.

Want more help making maple syrup?

Talk to me about your syrup making!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below. And please tag me on ig to show me your maple syrup @souly.rested.

More on how to make maple syrup:

• 32 tappable trees that can be tapped for making syrup
• Build your own reverse osmosis system for maple syrup
• How to identify a maple tree and make syrup
• How to know the perfect time to stop tapping your maple trees
• Substitute maple syrup for sugar
• How to make maple cream aka maple butter

“Listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.” Isaiah 55:2

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This is kind of the Ultimate Guide for a Newbie Sugarmaker right here, chocked full of answers to more than 20 questions you may not even know you have. Yet.

Hi. I’m Michelle.

Our family has been making maple syrup for a decade now. And you and I may have “met” already on the pages of Where Women Create Work, Hobby Farms, or my book, Sweet Maple.

Or maybe over on instagram, where I love sharing, and connecting with folks like you… folks who are interested in real food (like maple syrup) and getting back to the basics, even just a little bit (it doesn’t get more basic than boiling down sap into syrup, right?)

But today we’re diving into the top 20 things you need to know about sugarmaking. But first, let’s answer a few questions…

What is the most efficient way to make maple syrup?

The number 1 best way to make maple syrup efficiently is to use a special filter–a Reverse Osmosis filter. This will cut your boiling time in half, saving you a lot on the cost of fuel, not to mention all the time this will save you.  Go here for the full details on Reverse Osmosis for making syrup.

What are the techniques for maple syrup?

Maple maple syrup isn’t hard, if you know the right tips and have the time and the patience. There is a lot of detailed help right here, on this site, so take a look around. You want to start by knowing what trees you can tap for syrup, then you want to know the secret to tapping your trees at the right time, and you’ll want to gather up the equipment you’ll need for sugarmaking. Find out how to save money when making maple syrup. And you might want to look into using pumps for collecting your sap.

What makes maple syrup better?

This is, of course, a matter of opinion, but, as the author of Sweet Maple, I have three thoughts about what makes maple syrup better:

1. Saving money makes everything better, but maybe especially maple syrup. Building and using a Reverse Osmosis filter is a huge game changer for a backyard sugarmaker.
2. Doing a continual batch boil, where you are constantly adding new sap to your boiling pot or pan is going to lead to a richer, more flavorful maple syrup with hints of caramel.
3. Making it yourself. The effort you put into it as a family, and the time and energy you devote to the process genuinely makes you appreciate it so much more than if you walked into a farmers market, forked over some cash, and went home to pour it on your breakfast plate.

Top 20 Tips for Making Maple Syrup

1. ID Your Maple Trees

While there are certainly other trees you can tap successfully (see the full list of tappable trees here), a maple is always going to give you the best sugar content, therefore the most (and sweetest) syrup for your efforts. To know how to ID a maple tree, even in the dead of winter, watch this short little video:

2. Time it Right

I can’t give you a magic calendar of dates to tell you when to tap in each region, because the timing changes slightly every year, based on many different factors. The short answer is to watch the calendar for temperatures above 40 during the day and below freezing at night. More on that here, in this video:

3. Drill Right

Don’t drill downward. Do your best to stay level, with slight upward tilt. As I explain in Sweet Maple, “To be sure you have a perfectly circular hole, and to avoid air leaks around your taps, you’ll want to carefully drill a hole relatively straight into the tree, with a slightly upward angle to prevent sap pooling.” If sap drips back in, it will freeze every night and you’ll have to wait later the following day until you see any sap dripping into your buckets.

4. Don’t over tap

Respect the size of your tree and use the appropriate amount of taps. Overtapping a tree, or tapping one that is too small to begin with, will greatly reduce the amount of years you’ll be able to tap it, and the amount of wonderful syrup that beautiful tree will be able to provide for your family in the years to come.

Chart from my book for backyard sugarmakers, Sweet Maple.

5. Don’t Tap too Early

Trees are amazing at quickly healing. In just 4-6 weeks, they seal up wounds that are causing their sap to leak. Holes that you tap in mid-January in New England (when there may be a little sap flowing) will leave an inch or two of sap in a bucket every day, if that and then be healed over in mid-March, when they would typically be overflowing a 5-gallon bucket every day.

In this video I share what happened to us one year when we tapped too early.

And this article is loaded with tips on how and why to avoid tapping early here.

6. Choose Good Footwear

Get a good pair of boots and a nice pair of ice grippers or ice cleats so you’re prepared for inches deep of mud, standing water, a foot of snow, or slick ice. Because you very well may experience all of the above in one sugar season. I love my BOGS, (or here are men’s BOGS) but I imagine many different brands will do.

Go here to see the two different ice grippers and cleats I use & why.

7. Toss Ice

Save yourself a lot of time and fuel. Throw away any chunks of ice you see floating in your collection buckets. And pull out and toss any rings of ice that form around the inside edge of your buckets. Go here to read more on the “why” behind this.

More of an audio person? Check out my podcast on this topic:

8. Store your Sap Well

Even on a cold New England day, sap that sits in the collection bucket all day, in the direct sun, can get warm and spoil.

Remember, this is sugar water, and bacteria thrives off of sugar, so it’s important to keep your sap cold until you’re ready to process it.

The best advice I can give you is to process your sap often, if you’re able, and collect your sap often, if you can, especially on sunny days, moving your collected buckets to shady spots. Even better, if you have snow on the ground, make snow banks to burry your sap buckets in. We’ve even buried large coolers in shady spots of snow and dumped our sap into the coolers to hold it until we’re able to boil it.

9. Toss Old Sap

Don’t boil sap that if you have any fear at all that it might be bad. If it’s at all cloudy or ropey, throw it away. I repeat, throw it away. I know it’s hard, but trust me it’s harder throwing away syrup that tastes like dirty socks!

10. Filter Well!

Don’t scrimp on filtering. Do it often… filter when you pour your sap into your turkey fryer or evaporator, filter when you pour the almost-syrup into your pan on your kitchen stove, and filter when you go to bottle your syrup.

I never recommend using anything other than Orlon filters and prefilters. Anything less and you make the job much harder for yourself and you ensure your syrup will be filled with niter. I personally like this set of filters because it’s a high-quality filter that come with prefilters, and it’s from a fantastic, small, family-owned business that I love to support.

11. Choose the Right Tools

For first-time sugarmakers I always recommend starting off very small, with just the bare minimum equipment. But like the Orlon filter I mentioned above, a few items are definitely worth investing in. This list of supplies is more complete than what you need your first year, but it’s a good starting place to pick and choose from.

You may want to bookmark the list as a resource for what tools you’ll want to add on to your sugarmaking production as the years progress.

12. Know What Trees can be Tapped

Don’t think it’s all sugar maple or nothing… While a sugar maple is the holy grail of tapping, providing the highest ratio of sugar to sap of any tappable tree, don’t think you can only tap a sugar maple. That’s very far from the truth. Go here for a comprehensive list of all the tappable trees.

13. Invest the Time; it’s Worth it

Don’t think this is a simple little hobby you can do for an hour a week. Instead, go into it knowing it will gobble up a lot of your time, but it’s relaxing watching the sap boil (plus it smells amazing!) and it’s a nice break from screen time and stress. Also, it will come and go every year before you know it. Typically the longest season won’t stretch past a 6-week period.

14. Install Tubing the Easy Way

If you’re dealing with tubing in any way, even just to run a few taps from a few trees into a bucket for collection, know that hot water is your best friend. Simply dip the tubing in a thermos of hot water that you carry with you in the woods, and voila, it expands and slips easily over your connectors.

If you want to upscale your operation I highly recommend investing in this tool some day.

15. Keep it Simple &  Keep it Outside

Know that it’s okay to start off small. Just tap a few trees, grab a turkey fryer like this to boil in, and see if you like making syrup before you dive in too deep. If you don’t believe me, check out our set up when we first started out in the video below, where I also explain why it’s important to do your boiling outside:

16. Don’t Let it Boil Over

17. Save Money! (aka Reverse Osmosis)

You’ll hear a lot about an RO, because a Reverse Osmosis set up that you build yourself will save you tons of time and money, but don’t stress over it your first year. If you love making maple syrup and want to improve your set up next year, I’d make building an RO like this one my #1 priority for next year.

This video explains how it works and why it saves you so much time and money:

18. Talk to Other Sugarmakers

Listen in on maple-themed episodes of my Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy podcast right here.

If you have sugarmakers local to you, stop in and introduce yourself to them. Most are happy to help out a newbie and answer your questions.

If you’d like to be part of an encouraging group where your questions can all be answered online, join my Making Maple Syrup group on facebook. (I’ll see you on the inside!)

And take heart with these words of wisdom from some of our group members:

* A word of caution, if you don’t use the right tools and measure that your syrup is the right temperature (with this) and the right sugar content (with this), your syrup may turn out a little light and will mold in the jar. Or turn out too dark and form huge rocks of crystals in the jars.

19. Grab the Book of Knowledge for Backyard Sugarmakers

While I tried to cover all the common beginners questions here–as kind of an Ultimate Guide for a Newbie Sugarmaker–let’s face it this is just scratching the surface. I can’t dive into the kind of details here that I did in the 218-page book on the subject.

So please grab a copy of Sweet Maple at your local bookstore today. Or ordering it here actually supports your local store (pretty neat huh?):

Support Small Business & Order Sweet Maple Here

You can, of course, also order Sweet Maple on Amazon.

Best option? Let me send you an autographed copy, from our sugarbush to yours!

20. Make Sure You Have Fun

Most importantly? HAVE FUN. This article is all about how we enjoy the time with family.

3 Things You Need

Other tips about how to make maple syrup:

How to Save Time & Money Making Maple Syrup

How to Set up a Tubing System for Making Maple Syrup

Professional Sugarmaker’s Tips on How to Make Maple Syrup

My favorite tools for making maple syrup are all right here

 

 

 

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And all the trees of the field know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. Ezekiel 17:24

 

 

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post How to Make Maple Syrup–20 tips for beginners first appeared on Souly Rested.

For a downloadable, printable set of checklists (& useful homestead-related coupons & offers!) join my Subscriber Library. Or just keep scrolling for the complete lists.

It’s hard work, but it’s doable

I chose my brand name “SoulyRested” back when I was new to this homesteading “thing.”

Even then I realized there was nothing easy about trying to live life a little more simply.

I remember wondering if I would ever truly “rest” again… there’s just always so much to be doing around a small family farm. I knew I’d have to fight for rest in my SOUL, because I might not find time for a lot of physical rest.

In the end, this effort our family has made to live life a little simpler has been harder–and yet easier–than I thought it would be.

You just need a plan

But one thing that is imperative if you want to make a homestead run smoothly?

A plan.

A good plan.

A good plan for every season.

This book will help you make the best plan

My friend, Lisa Lombardo, has itemized exactly what I’m talking about in her brand-new book, The Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Homesteading, and I’m thrilled that she was happy to let me share her list here, with you guys.

Take a second to pre-order Lisa’s insightful, encouraging book here on Amazon or over on my favorite online bookshop, that gives back to your local bookstore with every order… while you’re there tell them I said “hi” and pick up a copy of my book too, if you haven’t already.

It turns out the pages of Lisa’s book are filled with all kinds of practical tips, charts, ideas, and encouragement for anyone who wants to use what they have–their own backyard–to start taking charge of their food supply and living life a little more simply.

But for today, I’m excited to share this helpful checklist with you.

A checklist for your homestead, for every season

As Lisa Lombardo points out in The Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Homesteading, every homestead will have different daily and seasonal chores.

So you’ll want to tailor this list for your own homestead, in fact I already did just that.

I added sugarmaking chores to Lisa’s lists.

The fact is, most folks just don’t know that they can make sugar from the sap of 31 different tappable trees, so many folks have what they need to be backyard sugarmakers, they just don’t know it.

Go here to peruse the list of 31 tappable trees–you might have a few yourself!

The Ultimate Homestead Checklist

This list is printed here with permission from Lisa Lombardo & Rockridge Press, the author and publisher of The Beginners’s Guide to Backyard Homesteading.

Spring Checklist

• Start seedlings
• Till the garden and grain fields
• Transplant the seedlings
• Grow cool-season crops in cold frames
• Sow grains and vegetables
• Order and care for chicks
• Assist livestock births
• Mild dairy animals
• Make cheese and dairy products
• Set up new beehives
• Fertilize fruit and nut trees
• Harvest early-season crops
• Weed, mulch, compost, and amend soil
• Spray fruit crops
• Clean out root cellar
• Clean up an store away sugaring equipment

Summer Checklist

• Weed, mulch, and compost
• Water the crops
• Harvest the crops–dive into my free ecourses on
• Prepare the beds for fall crops
• Preserve fruits, vegetables, and herbs for winter
• Butcher early meat harvest (chickens, rabbits)
• Milk dairy animals
• Make cheese and dairy products
• Spray fruit crops
• Remove excess fruit from trees
• Harvest honey (here are some Great Resources for Beekeeping)
• Check the hives and add supers as needed
• Catch swarms when available
• Check the hives for pests and disease
• Repair or replace sugaring equipment, if needed

Fall Checklist

• ID and mark your tappable trees. This article lists the 31 varieties of tappable trees.
• Gather supplies to build a filter that will help you save money making maple syrup.
• Harvest and preserve crops; store root crops
• Butcher livestock
• Store feed, hay, and bedding for winter
• Breed some livestock for spring birthing
• Take stock of harvests and plan for the coming year
• Sell excess livestock
• Clean chimney and put up firewood
• Clean debris from gardens and orchards
• Prepare your hives for winter (I wrote this article last fall that explains the process)

Winter Checklist

• Care for livestock
• Breed livestock
• Butcher livestock
• Check on the bees [on warmest days] and feed them when necessary
• Plan the vegetable garden and grains
• Purchase seeds and materials (this is my favorite source for seeds)
• Prune fruit trees (late winter)
• Apply dormant oil spray to fruit and nut trees (late winter)
• Build beehives and supers
• Repair fences as needed
• Split firewood
• Total expenses and plan next year’s budget
• Tap trees for syrup. This article explains the ideal time to tap.

Download the Homestead Checklist For Every Season

If you’d like a printable ebook loaded with these seasonal checklists that you can download and print out every year, just hop over and join my Subscriber Library. (BONUS: the ebook is also loaded with special homestead-related coupons and offers on some of my favorite products. Seriously.)

You’ll have instant access to the printable lists, as well as 3 pages full of coupons perfect for homesteaders, on my favorite products I use every season here on our own homestead.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it

Is this homesteading thing easy? Is living simply a simple thing to do?

Not on your life. But it’s worth it.

And if you’re armed with the right tools and checklists, you can definitely find a way to be souly rested, even in the midst of all the hard work.

Find out how ill prepared I was for this simple living and how if I can do this thing, anyone can, in my premiere podcast episode. And catch up on over 7 seasons of inspiration on the podcast right here.

More Articles About Homesteading, in Every Season:

12 Things to Ask Yourself if you Think you Want to Own a Farm

How Homesteaders Make Money

8 Things Most Homesteaders Won’t Tell You

How to Make Your Own Syrup & Save $100s a year 

So you think you’re ready to be a homesteader? Take this quiz & find out!

“In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.”  Proverbs 14:23

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the One of the Top Homesteading Blogs.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

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Now that you gotta love.

What if you just have a few trees?

I’m Michelle, author of Sweet Maple, Backyard Sugarmaking from Tap to Table (go here for a peek inside) and I’m elated that you found this page.

If you are a backyard sugarmaker with two or three trees to tap, you want to grab my book… it’s pretty much the Bible of Backyard Maple. But this post isn’t going to benefit you.

This article is for someone who has many trees to tap, who would rather not carry each bucket, one by one, from each tree back to their processing location. That’s exactly what we did for the first two years.

The first year, with a dozen trees, wasn’t so bad.

The second year, with twice as many trees, got exhausting.

This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.

Our turkey fryer pot and propane burner has served us well, and is truly all a backyard sugarmaker needs if they’re just tapping a dozen trees or less.

btw, if you want to upgrade or expand on a turkey fryer, this pot is a sweet upgrade with a spout and an extra thermometer that makes your job a lot easier. And this dual burner is great  with stainless steel pans like this if your backyard operation grows, as ours did.

We still, for one more season at least, use 3 propane burners and a combination of pots and pans to boil down our sap that we collect from more than 100 taps. But we weren’t about to carry 50-100 buckets from the woods every evening, for the 6 weeks of sugar season. Many of you have asked me how we built our collection system, so this article will break it down for you.

When you have more trees to tap…

By our third winter of sugarmaking Bill decided to not double our previous year’s number of taps, but quadruple them. With more than 100 taps, buckets would not be an option. So we added lines, collecting sap into collection tanks.

Grab a copy of Sweet Maple for lots of insight into that big step, if installing collection tubing like this is something you’re considering.

But just installing lines to collect your sap isn’t enough. For two reasons:

• First, you’ll want a vacuum pressure on your lines, to create the highest quantity of sap you can in your short 4-6-week window of sugarmaking every year.
• Then, you’ll need a way to pump the sap out of your collection tanks and into your tank on your truck or gator that you’re using to transport the sap.

Keep reading for links to everything we use to make this all run smoothly (and make us lots of smooth-tasting maple syrup).

What you’ll need to make a similar set up…

The transfer pump

The heart of this whole collection operation is the transfer pump. This one works great for us, and of course we have lots of extra batteries.

On a side note, this happens to be no effort for us at all because Bill is a huge fan of Milwaukee. We have bright red Milwaukee drills, and awesome beacons of light (aka this LED stand work light that comes in handy if we’re working in the sugarbush at night). The same interchangeable, rechargeable batteries work for all of the above.

The vacuum pump

Then you’ll need a stationary pump that serves as your vacuum on your lines. We use this pump for that purpose and store it in a heavy-duty plastic tote like this in the woods, at the base of our network of collection lines. The sap is pulled into a collection tank where we then pump out the sap daily into another collection tank on the back of our gator. We connect the pump to the collection lines as well as into the large collection tank using this 3/4″ high pressure tubing.

The tubing

And we use a 1/2″ piece of copper from Home Depot or Lowes, connected to this type of tubing with a 1/2-inch shark bite fitting to pull the sap out of our large collection tanks or 20-gallon tubs. (We found our collection tubs at Tractor Supply; they’re made to serve as food bins for farm animals.)

Once the sap is transferred to the gator, it’s super easy to drive back to our processing area, where we will RO the sap and boil it down. We just attach a piece of tubing, open the spigot of our carrying tank, and let it flow.

btw, if you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say we RO the sap, this article right here, all about reverse osmosis for sugarmakers, will change you life and save you hundreds of dollars a year.

How we made our vacuum system…

Here’s everything we used to make this set up work for us:

Here are some other links that might interest you:

Professional Sugarmaker’s Tips on How to Make Maple Syrup

6 Ways Sugarmakers can Outsmart Squirrels

Check out this list I’ve put together, after many years of research, of 31 trees that can be used for sugarmaking

How to build your own Reverse Osmosis filter–step by step–and why you should

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Psalm 34:8

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I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

The post How to make syrup–using pumps for collecting sap first appeared on Souly Rested.

How to identify a maple tree & make syrup

In this article, we’re breaking down how to identify a maple tree, in every season, and how to tap your maple tree(s) and make syrup.

Do you need a sugar maple?

Hi, I’m Michelle. A backyard sugarmaker in New England, and author of Sweet Maple.

Please consider helping me support sugarmaking education worldwide with every purchase of the SoulyRested Swag. You’ll find the latest designs right here (like the one I’m wearing here) .

Ideally, you’ve found the holy grail of all sugarmaking trees if you identify sugar maples.

Sugar maples offer the highest sugar content of any sap you can find, as well as a great sap production rate. Our best producing sugar maples will give us 5-10 gallons of sap a day, on the best days, at 2-3% sugar content.

But you definitely do not have to have a sugar maple to successfully make delicious syrup.

In fact, you don’t even have to have a maple, period. In my last post, right here, I itemized 31 varieties of trees that can be used to make syrup. Kinda crazy, but absolutely true.

Even so, there’s no denying that maple trees, in general, have the highest sugar content in the sap. So let’s talk about an easy way to identify if your tree is a maple tree, even in the winter, without the help of leaves.

How to identify a maple tree in the winter…

Even without any leaves to guide you, there is one telltale sign to look for to help you know if your tree is a maple tree.

Look where the branches meet on the branch. If they are alternate placement, like the beech branch on the left, below, you definitely do not have a maple tree.

If, on the other hand, your branches meet in an opposite placement, like the maple branch on the right below, you very well may have identified a maple tree.

You see, in all of nature there are only 4 types of trees that have opposite arrangement of their branches:

1. Maple,
2. Ash,
3. Dogwood,
4. Chestnut

By the overall shape of the tree and appearance of the bark, you can pretty easily eliminate the other 3 options and know if you have identified a maple.

How to identify a maple tree in the summer and fall…

It’s easy to examine the shape of the leaf’s cleft (where the lobes meet) and the edge of the leaf (if it’s smooth or serrated, or jagged) and know if you have a sugar maple tree. Watch the short video below to see exactly what you need to look for.

How can you tell a maple tree from another tree?

If you look closely at the leaf’s cleft (where the lobes meet) and the edge of the leaf (if it’s smooth or serrated, or jagged), you can easily tell a maple tree from another tree.  In this short little video, I show you exactly what to look for, and examples of different maple leaves.

How do I identify a specific maple tree?

Again, a close look at the leaves’ lobes and edge will tell you what type of a maple tree you have. While ALL maple trees are great for tapping and making maple syrup, if you only want to tap the most productive, best-of-the-best maple trees, you’ll want to identify your sugar maples. This short video helps you identify specific maple trees.

How to identify a maple tree in the spring…

When I first learned about the striking, unique appearance of sugar maples in the spring I was amazed at how easily I could identify a sugar maple from a long distance away. In this video right here I explain more about identifying a sugar maple in the spring.

And I wrote about spring maple tree identification as well.

How to make maple syrup…

Now that you’ve identified a maple tree or two, you need to know the ins and outs of tapping a tree and making maple syrup. Check out the plethora of information I offer here and grab a copy of my book, Sweet Maple, for all the answers to the questions you don’t even know you have yet.

Go here to see what others are saying about Sweet Maple and for a peek inside the book.

How to save money making maple syrup?

Watch this video to find out how to save hundreds of dollars a year on your backyard sugarmaking efforts. Or read the details in this article, and follow the links to everything you need to build your own reverse osmosis system for maple syrup.

Other articles you’ll want to read:

How to build a reverse osmosis system for maple syrup that will save you hundreds of dollars

Find out what 31 varieties of trees can be tapped to make syrup.

Find out what tools you can use to measure your sugar content when making syrup.

Make decadently delicious maple cream with your syrup!

A complete list of what you’ll need to tap trees and make syrup.

You can also follow my Maple Syrup pinterest board right here. Everything I ever write about maple gets added to that one board.

And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.” Ezekiel 17:24

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the One of the Top Homesteading Blogs.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of all the supplies I use and recommend for everything from gardening, to homeschooling, to chicken care, to nature journaling, to maple syrup making.

And download my 8-page Pantry Checklist and have instant access to the best ingredients and exclusive discounts.

I’d love to connect!

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There are Many Trees to Tap…

Hi, I’m Michelle. A backyard sugarmaker in New England, and author of Sweet Maple. And I’m here to tell you–you probably have a tree to tap…

Before we dive into this amazing list of tappable trees, I wanted to ask if you’d please consider helping me support sugarmaking education worldwide with every purchase of the SoulyRested Swag. You’ll find the latest designs right here (like the one I’m wearing here) .

I get two questions pretty often that require an emphatic “no” for an answer.

1. “I don’t live in a cold winter climate, so I can’t tap trees, right?” and…
2. “If a tree isn’t a sugar maple it won’t make good syrup, right?”

The answer to both of these questions is a wholehearted “no.”

3 Things you Need

What kind of trees can you tap?

Here’s a list of 32 sources of delicious syrup, which grow in various climates.

In fact, amazingly, at least one tree from this list grows in every single one of the states in the U.S.

I owe a wholehearted “thank you” to many sugarmakers around the world who helped me compile this list to answer your important question: “What trees to tap?”

I hope you find this list inspiring.

If you’ve successfully tapped an unusual tree on this list–or one that’s not!–I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. I would love to continually update this article with more information from you!

Want to know even more about sugarmaking?

For more details about these trees or info on how to tap trees, make maple confections, and understand the science behind syrup (and why I think it’s the best sugar known to man), you should pick up a copy of my book, Sweet Maple, available where ever books are sold. Or grab an autographed copy of my book for all the deets on everything “SYRUP.”

Even better, join me in my sugarbush, let’s roll up our sleeves together, and I’ll have you a tapping and boiling and bottling pro in no time flat–Join Maple Syrup University today.

3 Things You Need

Is it bad to tap trees too early?

It definitely pays off to be patient! If you tap too early you will loose out on the most productive time of sap flow because the tap holes will have started healing and closing before that time arrives in your sugar season. Lots more in this article from extensive research by The University of Vermont Extension: The Secret to Tapping Trees at the Right Time.

Can you tap a tree too late?

For sure! If you wait too far into the sugar season you’ll miss week’s worth of precious sap collecting. Go here for lots more insights: How to Know the Perfect Time to Stop Tapping

What tools to use?

Folks are always asking what tools they need to make syrup. So I made a list of all my syrup-making tool recommendations. That was easy.

Now the rest of this post is another list. One that wasn’t so easy. It took years of research and talking to sugarmakers around the world to compile this list. But it’s fascinating and I hope you discover, thanks to this list, that you have a few trees you can use to make amazingly delicious all-natural sugar.

What trees to tap?

Trees to tap in the maple family

Sugar maple This is the holy grail of maples because its sap is more concentrated than any other maple, meaning you can make more syrup with less sap.

Bigleaf maple Native Americans have tapped these trees for centuries, but current-day sugarmakers tend to not even know about this power horse, even though bigleaf maples can produce as much sweet sap as sugar maples. I’ve tasted big leaf maple syrup that a reader, Pamela Williams, shipped to my little corner of New England from Vancouver. I can attest that it is delicious.

Black maple These rival sugar maples in sap volume and they even resemble them as well.

Boxelder This hardy tree can often be found in abandoned areas, along railroad tracks, and in ditches, so this may be a sugarmaking tree that you can forage sap from, as long as you’re prepared to transport a lot of the cold sugar water. Boxelders may yield only half the syrup of sugar maples.

Canyon maple/big tooth maple These trees are popular in the Rocky Mountain states and Texas. While their sap has high sugar content, their volume isn’t impressive.

Douglas maple can be found in Alaska, through British Columbia, and into Washington state. It also grows further south into Oregon, California, and Nevada, as well as out to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

Gorosoe The gorosoe is the most popular tapping tree overseas. In Korea, where the tree’s sap is enjoyed by locals and tourists alike as a health drink, “Gorosoe” means “the tree that is good for the bones.” Read chapter 6 in Sweet Maple {{LINK}} for all the details of the science behind syrup to find out why “Gorosoe” happens to be a perfect name.

Greene’s maple can be found in central California.

The New Mexico maple grows in its namesake state as well as Arizona, Colorado, and Utah.

Norway maple Norway maple syrup is less sweet that other maple syrups, but it’s a smooth, buttery flavor.

Red maple While they also produce high yields of sap, rep maples’ tapping season is shorter. But their sap produces a yummy, slightly tart syrup.

Rocky Mountain maple The Plateau Native Americans made syrup from these trees, found in western North America.

Silver maple Like red maples, these trees produce spring buds very early, so they have a short tapping season. But the syrup is delicious.

This article tells you more about how to know when to pull your taps. 

Sycamore Maple This variety of maple, native to central and southern Europe, can be found in pockets of the U.S. While it has a pretty low sugar content, sycamore sap makes some yummy syrup with delicious hints of caramel and vanilla.

Trees to tap in the walnut family

While many say walnut syrup is delicious, I need to warn you that walnut trees naturally produce a lot of pectin. This means if you don’t filter walnut sap correctly, to remove the pectin, you may wind up with walnut jam instead of walnut syrup. I have no experience making walnut syrup, but the best tip I’ve heard is to let the walnut sap sit (making sure you keep it cold) until the pectin separates, and then it’s easy to just skim it off the top before you boil.

Black walnut The black walnut tree is for valuable for timber, as well as a good source for sap, with a long tapping season. The syrup is nutty, rich, dark, and just a little bitter.

Butternut/white walnut The butternut is similar to a sugar maple for sugar content and volume of sap.

English walnut These trees produce the walnuts we purchase from the grocery store. They can be tapped, but they need especially cold winter and spring temperatures to be tapped successfully.

Heartnut While heartnuts have a good concentration of sugar in their sap, they produce much less sap than maples.

Trees to tap in the birch family

I’ve talked to many people who tap Alaskan white birch who are convinced they need to finish their syrup at a lower Brix to avoid bitterness. Read all about what brix is, why it matters, and how you measure it, right here. But any syrup—maple, walnut, birch, or whatever you’re making—isn’t truly “syrup” at any brix less than 66 percent sugar. I have talked to folks who bottle their birch syrup at 60 percent Brix, but they don’t have birch syrup, they just have birch-flavored water.

Alaskan white birch is a fabulous syrup for baking and marinating meats. I have never made birch syrup, and am very glad I have hundreds of sugar maples, so I probably never will, given how low it is in sugar content and, therefore why it’s so expensive to make. But I’ve been sent a few bottles from readers and can tell you it’s delicious in my as well as a perfect syrup to use to marinate steak (recipe here).

White Birch, the state tree of my home state (New Hampshire), is a different variety than the short Alaskan white birch. Even though it is the state tree, it is not as prominent as the sugar maple, at least not in my corner of New England. Given that all birch varieties have half or less of the sugar content of sugar maple sap, I choose to ignore our white birch trees. But many folks do say they have the sweetest sap of all birches.

Black birch While black birch, native to eastern North America, is most most commonly used to make birch beer, it can be tapped for syrup too.

European white birch While many say this tree’s syrup is “unappealing,” birch syrup is great for cooking.

Gray birch While this variety of birch tree never grows large, the gray birch can be tapped if it grows large enough.

Paper birch While the paper birch requires a lot more boiling time than maples, since it has a very low sugar content (less than 1%), it is the sweetest of the birch trees.

River birch This birch grows in the southeastern United States and in the Northeast, and it can be successfully tapped.

Yellow birch This birch tree sap has a higher mineral composition and a higher number of antioxidants than sugar maples’ sap, but a lower sugar content.

And there are more trees to tap! (kinda)

Sycamore Many sycamore tappers report that sycamore syrup has a touch of butterscotch flavor. Of course most people have never heard of tapping sycamore, so there is a wealth of delicious sycamore sap around the country just waiting to be tapped into.

Sweetgum While sweetgum trees offer quality syrup, they do not offer a lot of sap wood in relation to heart wood.

Palm It turns out palm trees are not really trees at all, but flowering plants. If you happen to live in the only one of all 50 US states that doesn’t have a truly tappable tree (and that’s Hawaii), believe it or not, you can still make syrup, from palm trees. Palm syrup is not made by boiling sap, but by lancing the flower of the palm, to make it weep. The liquid collected from the flower is boiled down to a syrup that, I’m told, is wonderfully honey-tasting sweet.

Shagbark hickory Hickory syrup isn’t made by tapping into the trunk of the tree. Instead, hickory syrup is made from an extract taken from the bark of these trees. See Sweet Maple for a great marketing suggestion for shagbark hickory syrup from Mike Farrell, former director of Cornell’s Uihlein Maple Forest research center.

Tulip poplar Poplar syrup is made the same way as hickory syrup, by boiling down toasted pieces of poplar bark.

Sorghum No, sorghum is not a tree, but sorghum syrup—a favorite in the South—is worth a mention here. The all-natural molasses-like syrup is made by pressing sorghum canes through a mill, to extract the juices out of the cane. Then the juices are boiled down to make syrup.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

More information about what trees to tap?

So there you have it. After years of talking to sugarmakers around the world, and compiling lots of great tips and information about making and baking with all-natural syrup and pulling it all together to write Sweet Maple, here’s my list of 30 trees (and one plant) I compiled. See this book  for more detailed information about tapping each of these trees along with everything you need to know about backyard sugarmaking, not to mention lots of inspiration in how to use your delicious syrup.

If you do decide to pick up a copy of Sweet Maple, please be sure to take advantage of the amazing bonuses that come with your purchase–valued almost 3x the cost of the book, btw–go here for more info.

Also, you may want to join my facebook group, Maple Syrup Making where experts from around the world offer tips and encouragement.

Oh, and, random note (cause sometimes I’m random),  if you’d like to know why I’m super happy when I find ice in my sap bucket, you’ll like this article.

Do you need to live in the maple belt to find trees to tap?

So I still haven’t told you why I answer “no” to that other question I get all the time. You know the one about “Can I tap trees if I don’t live in the “Maple Belt”?”

In researching and writing my book, I was blown away at how many folks I talked to who successfully tap well outside of the Maple Belt.

Pamela Williams is a great example. She has learned to watch the barometer more than the thermometer to know when to tap. Pamela doesn’t have sugar maples where she lives, on the west coast, so she taps bigleaf maples. And she’s part of a large group of sugarmakers who call themselves the SapSuckers. They not only tap very successfully outside of the maple belt, without sugar maples, but they love educating others how to do the same thing.

Pamela explains, “Bigleaf sap runs happen after extreme weather events. Barometric swings between the atmosphere and the tree produce sap runs as good as, if not better than, a reliable freeze-and-thaw cycle,” which is important when Vancouver experiences a mild winter.

btw, if you’d like to know more about the specifics of tapping bigleaf maples, you’ll enjoy this little book: Bigleaf Sugaring, by Gary and Katherine Backlund. 

From my family to yours, Happy Tapping!

Want to be an expert sugarmaker?

It took Bill and I sooo many years of mistakes and trial and error before we understood the art of backyard sugarmaking, but I was determined to use all we learned to teach others. You don’t have to waste years of effort and batches of trashed syrup (been there).

Grab a copy of my detailed book and dive into Maple Syrup University–I created this 12-module resource of videos, printables, and detailed workbook so you could be an expert at this in no time flat.

3 Things You Need

More info about trees to tap & making syrup:

Take a FREE self-paced e-course and learn all my syrup-making tips and secrets

What tools are needed for backyard sugarmaking?

What is brix? And what tool should you use to measure it?

How to make syrup, step by step

Build a reverse osmosis system for maple syrup

Join Maple Syrup University!

The godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon. Psalm 92:12

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and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? You’ll have instant access when you sign up for my FREE e-course of sugarmaking secrets, right here–>

The post 32 Tappable Trees that can be tapped for making syrup first appeared on Souly Rested.

If you’re just trying this out and only tapping a few trees for fun, you can keep it very low key. A few taps and buckets and a large pan over the fire should do it. When it’s time to bottle your syrup, a simple candy thermometer can help you test the temperature and know when to bottle it. Go here to see the taps, buckets, and thermometer I recommend.

If you want to make a hobby out of making syrup, you will very soon realize you want to have the best tool to test your sugar content, to make sure you’re bottling it at the perfect point.

So it’s one of the Million Dollar Questions in the world of backyard sugarmaking… “How do you test your brix?” If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll explain below.

Go here for step-by-step directions on how to make syrup, or take a listen to the podcast episode I recorded all about the 8 Steps From Sap to Syrup. (Or go here for a link to listen on your favorite podcast player.)

And grab a copy of my book, Sweet Maple, or my course, Making Maple Sugar, if you want to know every detail about all things maple.

How to make syrup — and “measure the brix.”

To have the best syrup, you want to know when it’s boiled down to the perfect thickness. Or, another way to say it is that you want to boil off just the right amount of water to leave you with the perfect amount of sugar.

To know when you’ve reached syrup perfection, you need to take a simple measurement. In the syrup world, it’s called “brix.” The brix–or the perfect amount of sugar–is 66-68 (or 66-68% sugar). At that stage, you have yourself some genuine good syrup; not too runny & not too thick.

So how do you measure the brix? This is one of those questions. A question that is always debated and never solved to everyone’s agreement. But that’s okay, because most backyard enthusiasts have one tool that they stick with, because they’re not overly particular and it works for them. Professional sugarmakers, on the other hand, have a very definite opinion of the best tool to use. Sometimes they have a very specific combination of tools that they use, in a very precise manner, every time.

How to make syrup–what tools measure the brix?

Without arguing it to the death–cause well I don’t really care what tool we use, as long as I have maple syrup in my root cellar all year long, ya know what I’m saying?–I will describe the tools that will help you have perfectly boiled syrup. Which you should use, well, that’s the $20,000 question.

Here’s a break down of how these nifty tools work.

Hydrometer

To use a hydrometer, you fill the tall metal cup, which you purchase with your hydrometer (but usually as a separate purchase) with your syrup that you’re boiling. Then gently place your hydrometer in the filled cup (with a plate underneath to catch any overflow). It will float, and when it finishes bobbing in the syrup, you can read the measurement on the hydrometer at the line of your syrup. If the red line is even with the surface of your syrup in the cup, you’re ready to bottle. 

If your brix reading is too low, and the red line floats below the surface of the syrup, you need to keep boiling your sap and try measuring it again in a little bit. If, on the other hand, your brix reading is too high, mix in a little partially-boiled sap, cook the syrup a little bit longer and retest it.

If you decide to purchase a hydrometer, keep in mind that there are different types of hydrometers for using in beer and wine making, so be sure you buy the type of hydrometer that is calibrated for syrup making. This one is perfect. Then make sure you have a hydrometer cup like this one as well. If you’d like to purchase both a hydrometer and the cup that you’ll need to use with it together in one kit, my friends over at Smoky Lake Maple have got you covered. Check out their hydrometer and cup combo right here.

Refractometer

If you wanna go a little-fancier, you could consider a refractometer. If you do, you have a choice of manual or digital. Either way, a refractometer does exactly what its name insinuates. It measures how light is refracted through your sugary, boiled-down sap to determine how high your sugar content is. Even one step better, many refractometers are more detailed than hydrometers in the sense that they can also measure the sugar content in your sap, right out of the tree.

A few years ago, we upgraded from a hydrometer to a refractometer because we wanted to be able to measure both sap and syrup. We use it when we’re bottling syrup, but we also like using our refractometer to measure the sugar content of our sap before and after running it through our RO filter, to reassure ourselves just how awesome our RO is and how much money it’s saving us.

You’ll place a drop of sap or syrup in a little cup at the end of your refractometer then, with the manual option, hold it up to the light. With a digital refractometer–this is the one we have –you just push a button. As light reflects through your syrup, it’s refracted and the nifty tool in your hand tells you the sugar content of your syrup. You do want to zero out, or “reset” your refractometer with each reading, using water that is a similar temperature to the sap or syrup drop that you will be placing on it.

If on the other hand, you only want to measure the sugar content of your sap, you can save money by getting a refractometer that only measures on the lower end of the scale. But I personally want one refractometer that can measure everything I need to know… sugar content in sap as well as syrup. That’s why we own this refractometer. Both are fine choices, depending on what your needs are.

On the other hand, if you want a professional grade refractometer that is durable and as versatile as you’ll find anywhere, this top-end refractometer might be for you. Watch this video to see our refractometer and how I use it to measure the sugar content of my sap and my boiling syrup.

Murphy Cup

This tool is a nifty sort of a combination of others, in one place. You need to fill the cup with syrup, float a hydrometer in the cup—just as I described in the description of a hydrometer above—and read the dial on the cup. The dial tells you what your hydrometer needs to read, based on the temperature of your syrup. To have perfect syrup, you just want the dial to match the reading on your hydrometer. That’s all you need to do.

I love the ingenuity behind the Murphy Cup, and the smart inventors behind it run a great shop, full of products I often recommend to backyard sugarmakers. So whether you’re in the market for a nifty Murphy Cup or not, stop over to Smoky Lake Maple (and tell Jim & Angela I sent you :)).

If you want more maple-infused goodness…

Grab a copy of my book, Sweet Maple, for more tips on using these three tools and pretty much an answer to every question you come up with about backyard sugaring.

Every sugarmaker also needs a great maple recipe… sign up here and download ebooks and printable recipes. All resources are totally free, in my Resource Library for subscribers.

Or maybe you’d like some maple goodness in your kitchen without any effort at all… I can help with that too. Check out this amazing syrup. Use code SOULYRESTED and save $$ too!

Other articles about how to make syrup:

A list of all the products I recommend for sugarmaking.

Making maple syrup in your backyard, step by step.

Sugarmaking tips from the pros.

6 ways to outsmart squirrels on the sugarbush (or in your backyard sugarmaking).

Everything you need to know to make your own RO filter & save hundreds of dollars making your own syrup.

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. Ecclesiastes 3: 12-13

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Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018

and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

 

 

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

The post How to Make Syrup–what tools do you need? first appeared on Souly Rested.

Squirrels on a Maple Syrup Farm

If you’re a sugarmaker, chances are you’ve gone head-to-head a few times with a squirrel who is after the same sweet sap that you are. Whether you own a large, professional maple syrup farm, a rural sugarbush (like our family), or just tap a tree or two in your backyard, squirrel troubles can be an irritating reality.

Of course the little furry guys with big tails practice sugar maple tapping too. The North American squirrel is known as Sciurus carolinensusk, for those who are into binomial nomenclature… (I happened to love that chapter in high school biology.)

But no matter what you call the little devilish things, squirrels are effective tappers during sugaring season. They gouge the bark of young maple trees with their two front teeth and drink the sap that flows. And they’ll chew through tubing or plastic collection bags, not to mention do anything they can to access sap buckets.

So how can you avoid the problems that squirrels bring to a maple syrup farm or just your backyard maple-syrup-making operation so you, ultimately, can bottle the most delicious syrup possible?

Read on, my friend. And be sure to grab a copy of my book, Sweet Maple, or my course, Making Maple Sugar, if you want to know every detail about all things maple. Remember to snag the $75 worth of bonuses that come with Sweet Maple (see the list of bonuses here) & take advantage of the $53 worth of special bonuses that come with my maple sugar course as well. (See that list here.)

Some links in this article take to you affiliate products that I use and love. If you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. 

6 Ways to Outsmart the Squirrels

If you happened upon this page wanting to know more about how to make maple syrup, you may want to start here. Otherwise, if you need some tips to deter squirrels. read on.

1. Use buckets, not bags.

Bags tend to attract bothersome squirrels who want easy access, because chewing through a plastic collection bag is a piece of cake for a determined rodent. I explained in Sweet Maple that we prefer buckets over bags for this very reason.

On the other hand, plenty of folks buy and use collection bags like these with great success. So it’s worth noting that people who use collection bags instead of buckets say they like working with the bag better than a sometimes awkward bucket and they like that they can see how full the bag is from quite a distance, knowing if they need to empty them on any given day.

2. Use a different cleaner.

Louis Plante, a professional who runs a family maple syrup farm in New Hampshire, found that changing the solution they were using to clean their lines at the end of the season made a big difference in their squirrel troubles. Their previous solution was appealing to the annoying little rodents, who apparently liked the taste. Once they switched what solution they were using to sterilize their lines and taps, they noticed a lot less squirrel destruction. Read other suggestions Lou has for backyard sugarmakers right here and in Sweet Maple as well. 

And, if you’re in the market for purchasing some maple syrup, I’ve been recommending Lou’s family’s delicious syrup for years, made on the family’s maple syrup farm in Hinsdale, NH. Go here to order their all-natural, wood-fired maple syrup.

3. Use gloves around the maple syrup farm.

Brenda Chmielewski, a sugarmaker in Vermont, shared a tip with me that makes a lot of sense. She recommended always having clean gloves on when installing or working with your tubing. Squirrels seem to be attracted to the taste of salt, and if your hands are at all sweaty, you leave a delicious taste behind for the tree rats, encouraging them to take a few bites, which of course will lead them to the even more appealing non-ending trickle of delicious, sweet sap.

4. Use some hot stuff.

Dameian Edgerly, a backyard sugarmaker in in Ohio, recommends slathering a hot mess on your lines where the squirrels seem to be attracted. He mixes an unappealing concoction of Vasoline and Tabasco Sauce or hot peppers. (Ground hot peppers will hold the spiciness a little better in the rain and/or sunlight exposure.) Bonus, if you’re worried about the well-being of your tree rats, this concoction is non-lethal to the squirrels. It will, of course, need to be reapplied after heavy precipitation.

5. Use some ammo or a good 4-legged friend.

If, on the other hand, you’re NOT worried about saving a rodent’s life, many sugarmakers insist that it’s necessary to cull the squirrel population in their woods annually. Others swear by the importance of having a good dog around the sugarbush often to keep the squirrel population under control. Bixby would second this notion.

I would also add that our barn cats do an amazing job of critter control around our little farm. While they don’t traverse the woods as much as Bixby does, the squirrels are happy to come to them. For this E.B. is eternally grateful.

6. Use a chainsaw.

Finally, if you’re able to clear out your softwood trees you will notice a lot less squirrels wreaking havoc around the maple sugar farm or in your backyard.

3 Things you Need

Other articles you may enjoy about troubleshooting problems around a maple syrup farm:

An article about how to save money making maple syrup.

Read this to find out why you should throw away the ice in your sap.

Everything you need to know to bake deliciously with maple syrup.

A list of the products our family uses for making maple syrup.

A collection of podcasts, print, and online articles about making maple syrup.

 

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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4

 

 

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Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

Please take a second to follow along here on SoulyRested to catch up on a few of my memorable mishaps, discover fascinating things about my centuries-old farmhouse, glean a little parenting/homeschooling insight from this momma who’s been failing at the effort for almost 2 decades, or enjoy the inside scoop on the secrets other legit homesteaders might not tell you.

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library?

 

The post 6 Ways to Outsmart Squirrels on a Maple Syrup Farm first appeared on Souly Rested.

I’m Kinda Obsessed With Maple Syrup

I kinda love helping folks who want to know how to make syrup. So I talk about it in workshops across the country and I write about it. A lot. You’ll find a ton of information about how to make maple syrup ere on the blog and in the pages of my new book, Sweet Maple. (aff link) And others interview me and write about it in fun places like Whole Foods Magazine and Mother Earth News.

Oh, and I eat syrup a whole lot too. In fact, I love baking with maple syrup. (Find out all you need to know to bake with maple syrup right here.)

So today I thought I’d pull together a small list of some of the podcasts and articles that you may love if you too have syrup on the brain, want to know how to use maple in the kitchen as an amazing alternative to refined sugar,  or just want to know how to make syrup.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to peruse a list of products we use and love here on our sugarbush, this list right here is for you.

If you’d like a list of gift ideas that my favorite sugarmaker helped me pull together, you’ll love this article.

Podcast Episodes About How to Make Syrup

In this maple-infused episode of Jill Winger’s Old Fashioned On Purpose podcast hear two homesteaders discuss why homesteading (and sugarmaking!) matters & why this sugarmaker (moi) initially had a difficult time with the transition from living in suburbia.

Learn how to tap & make syrup & garner some baking tips for substituting maple syrup for refined sugar in your baking.

Listen in to 7 health benefits of maple syrup & learn how to use it in your kitchen every day on this episode of Pioneering Today.

This short episode on Lehman’s Solutions for a Simpler Life podcast, you’ll find out how one sugarbush got started & what’s so great about maple syrup.

This Backyard Bounty podcast episode isn’t so much about maple as it is about how to make my favorite drink in the world–kombucha–but it does explain how to make MAPLE kombucha, so I had to include it here.

And Then There’s My Podcast…

Then there’s my own podcast, Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy. While it’s about all things simple living, maple syrup is, of course, a very big part of that for my family, so there will be many sweetly-inspired maple reverences and episodes. For instance, there’s this one, about the Science Behind the Syrup:

Magazine Articles About How to Make Syrup

I was thrilled to be featured in Where Women Create Work, the holiday 2019 issue, where I wrote about how to build a business around something you love (like making maple syrup) without selling products (like maple syrup). I also talked about this topic in this Facebook Live.

I expanded on my insights from that magazine article here in this post: How I Make Money Blogging.

And grab a copy of the January 2020 issue of Hobby Farms Magazine for another great print article–From Sap to Syrup.

On-line Articles About How to Make Syrup

Whole Foods Magazine interviewed me for their article on  The Sweet Side of Life & harvesting natural sweeteners at home.

Lehman’s asked me to write a few maple-infused articles for them:

• How to make Maple Switchel and flavor Maple Kombucha. (Go here for the details on making maple kombucha.)
• How sugarmaking makes memories with teens (not to mention how it makes baking better!)

Capper’s Farmer asked me to share my Maple Butter Dog Bone recipe in their publication. Read that right here.

And I was elated when Mother Earth News asked me to write these articles:

• Learn why in our over-sugared culture we need maples syrup & why real food always trumps the alternatives.
• Read about what you need to know when buying maple syrup.

What Others Have Been Saying

If you’d like a peek inside my book, Sweet Maple, hop over to here. You’ll also be able to read lots of reader’s opinions and insights from the book.

And the reviews are in; here’s what others are saying about Sweet Maple:

Me & My Books

The Self Sufficient Home Acre

Homestead Lady

Salt in my Coffee

Minnesota from Scratch

Nancy on the Homefront

The Prairie Homestead

Simply Canning

Lavender Home Front

Little House Living

You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Psalm 18:28

Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of other supplies I use for maple syrup making (as well as gardening, homeschooling, homesteading topics, nature journaling, and more).

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon; you can read more about my camera and even purchase your own here.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library?

The post How to Make Syrup–podcasts, articles & more that you’ll love first appeared on Souly Rested.

So I did these things…

A few days ago I did this thing… and then another thing… While they seemed unrelated at the time yet, I just realized, they were amazingly intertwined.

The first thing? After almost 3 years of pretty intense effort I launched a book out into the world last week… a book that will encourage homes across the country to take one small, sweet step toward more sustainable living… a book that will draw families together and put all-naturally sweetened goodness on their tables. A book about how to make maple syrup and so much more. Needless to say, I’m super excited about this.

Then I launched this gorgeous old farmhouse table into a new life. And this story, well it almost made me cry (happy tears).

Traveling 1,000 miles for a farmhouse table…

You see, just last month, I had traveled over 1,000 miles, round-trip, to a cousin’s storage unit where this piece had been taken apart and packed away until I could get there. This table is the table that stood in the kitchen of an old house in a little rural area known as Greenridge, Maryland.

Nothing about that old house was unassuming. It was a large white farmhouse with a gorgeous double-decker front porch where my daddy spent many hours growing up. It’s long porches stretched out there in the rolling hills that sauntered down to the canal and railroad tracks. Canal boats and numerous train cars brought many a people through Greenridge, but not many who stayed.

I have no idea how or when this table arrived at that rural home, but it sure must have added a gorgeous piece of flair to that home in the hills. My daddy must have spent many long hours at this table, watching his momma knead the daily bread, his little chubby fingers learning to break beans or churn butter–any simple tasks grandma may have given to the almost baby of the family.

Pieces of family history…

While I know nothing of the table’s origins, I’m so grateful that other family members treasure such things–pieces of family history with stories to tell–as much as I do. And I’m so thankful that a few sweet cousins decided it was time for this table to draw folks together around real food again, in another old farmhouse… a 200-year-old New England cape situated on sloping homestead that saunters down to the river that hugs its borders.

On that Maryland homestead, and here on this New England one, for hundreds of years, families have worked hard to put good food on the dinner table. And now one table has lived on both homesteads, in two different farmhouse kitchens, but all in one family.

Then on Tuesday, October 1st–a rainy, chilly, unassuming fall day here on our New England homestead–Kayla and I set up this sweet, old table in our family’s farmhouse kitchen. A long way from the canal banks in Greenridge, in that tiny pocket of Maryland that’s cradled by the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, to our little rocky homestead that stretches up from the cool waters of the riverbank.

Meanwhile, in bookstores…

Meanwhile, that very same day my book was popping up on bookstore displays across the country (or so I’m told, I still find this next to impossible to believe). Sweet Maple is about how our family has changed things up a little and worked hard to simplify our lives, especially the food we fill our table with, making the food real and our efforts sustainable, whenever we can.

And then that very night for dinner we were gathered around the same table where my daddy, as a young boy, ate nothing but “real food” and knew no way of life other than a “sustainable” one.

October 1st was a very good day indeed.

I could never have planned such a perfect story; but I am so thankful it was written that way.

The Book of Knowledge on How to Make Maple Syrup

It’s hard for me to describe my new book, Sweet Maple, in just a few words. Because I pretty much mixed my genres. (I always have liked mixing things up a bit.)

• It’s part cookbook (with every recipe–from sweet to savory–incorporating maple in some way),
• part instructional manual (about how to tap trees and make maple syrup, but also about how to bake with maple syrup and how to make candies, sugar, and cream),
• part memoir (about our family’s efforts to simplify things),
• and 100% encouraging and delicious.

So I love the ways CIndy Kuhns, a reader in Ohio, recently described it. Cindy said it’s a Book of Knowledge of all things Maple. (Get a peek inside, read about the $75 worth of bonuses that come with every purchase, and see more reviews right here.)

I love that Joel Salatin said that this book is “a compelling one for anyone’s self-reliance book shelf,” because one of my goals in writing Sweet Maple was to encourage folks that moving towards sustainability can be done with very simple steps, and the first one can be making one’s own all-natural sugar.

To inspire you a little more, though, in next week’s post I’ll share 5 very simple ways to make a big difference toward being more sustainable. Meanwhile, I have a huge favor to ask… But it comes with a chance to win a few really fun things. Read on for the details.

And listen in below or on your favorite podcast player to find out some information about the science of syrup:

I’m on a mission & I need your help.

I’m on a mission to bring the warm sweetness of an all-natural, super-food syrup into kitchens everywhere.

I’m on a mission for others to know the pure joy that our family does when we sit at the breakfast table, pouring our syrup over our pancakes and looking out at the very trees that produced this syrup. Self-sustaining, right-from-the-source food has truly never tasted so sweet.

I’m on a mission to teach thousands of people how to make maple syrup.

Yet so many people who could be tapping a tree right in their own yard don’t even know it yet. They don’t know that they don’t have to live in the maple belt. They don’t know that they don’t even have to have a maple tree, since there are 30 varieties of trees that can be used to make syrup (at least one of which grows in every single state in the U.S.).

Stacy Lyn Harris, a TV personality and bestselling author, talks about that in her short video review of my book that you can watch here on facebook and or you can watch here on instagram.

And so many people don’t know they can bake with maple, adding minerals, antioxidants, and polyphenolic compounds to their diet in such an easy way.

Sharon Peterson, an online influencer who writes at SimplyCanning.com, mentions that in this brief video, in her book review of Sweet Maple.

This is how you can help.

Would you be willing to help me spread the sweetness? The awesome folks over at Smoky Lake Maple and Jovial Foods wanted to help me on my mission, so they donated these amazing prizes.

To enter the giveaway, this is all you have to do:

1. Hop over to Amazon and leave a brief review of Sweet Maple. 
2. Then leave a comment below, letting me know you’ve left a review and what prize you hope to win.

In a few weeks, we’ll randomly choose two winners and announce them right here.

One will receive an amazing tool to help them make perfect syrup, every time–a Murphy Compensation Cup from Smoky Lake Maple. This amazing cup (a $139 value!), along with a hydrometer, is all you need to bottle syrup at the perfect temperature and brix.

And another winner will enjoy a $50 Gift Card to Jovial foods. They have the most amazing ancient-grain flour. (I share a maple cookie recipe made with their Einkorn flour in my crash course on Making Maple Sugar.)

So please help! Hop over to Amazon and leave a book review right here (affiliate link)… unless you still need to grab a copy? You can read more about Sweet Maple right here–and the $75 worth of amazing free bonuses that come with your purchase! If your local bookstore isn’t carrying it yet, please suggest to them that they should, but you can order a copy right here as well. (affiliate link)

Thanks so much to all who entered! I drew the winners live on facebook, right here.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

Psalm 16:6

Pin this for later!

Click on the image below to pin this post.

Find out why SoulyRested was considered to be one of the Top 20 Must-Read Homesteading Blogs of 2018 and then one of the Top Homesteading Blogs of 2019 as well.

Glance at my Resource Page if you’d like to get a glimpse of supplies I use for maple syrup making, DIY kombucha, gardening, homeschooling, and homesteading.

Many readers often ask what camera I use to take the images you find here on SoulyRested. I love my Nikon.

I’d love to connect!

To find me in some other neck of the woods, just click any (or every!) icon below:

And please follow along!

And have you tried my a-MAAHZ-ing Maple Sugar Cookie recipe that’s in my Resource Library? It’s one little peek into Sweet Maple waiting for you over there.

The post It’s Here!—The Book of Knowledge on How to Make Maple Syrup first appeared on Souly Rested.