“When made in small quantities—that is, quickly from the first run of sap and properly treated—it has a wild delicacy of flavor that no other sweet can match. What you smell in freshly cut maple-wood, or taste in the blossom of the tree, is in it. It is then, indeed, the distilled essence of the tree.”
John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons, 1886
Homemade maple syrup has no comparison. Don has been tapping trees and boiling syrup for our personal use for many years now. There is nothing better than fresh maple syrup over pancakes. There is a lot of work involved. Wood has to be gathered for the fire. Trees need to be tapped and then sap gathered each day and carried home. Then there are hours of boiling since it takes 40 gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup. Then there is finishing, straining, and bottling this liquid gold. It’s four weeks of hard work, but so worth the effort.
Don finishes boiling the sap down in the kitchen, then bottles it. Mmmmm!
ohhhhhh, such hard work for this liquid gold!!! Like I said, we got a chance to enjoy a jar of it and it was very, very DELISH!!! We are avid pancake eaters and we loved it:)
ReplyDeleteLinda LOu