Early Boxelder (Maple) Sugaring, I Make My Own Spiles.

Looking at the weather forecast last week I saw the upcoming week's temperatures would cycle in the range that is good for sugaring maples.  I have been procrastinating buying spiles for about a month now, and last Thursday I decided I would try to make my own out of some scrap tubing I had lying around.

Here is what I came up with.  I would say it was better than paying a couple dollars each but I broke my bandsaw blade in the process.  A bit of scrounging and 4 extension cords later I headed out to the treeline and installed it in a boxelder tree growing out back.

After installing it I promptly forgot about it until Sunday morning.  I headed out to check the pail.  It had collected a quart of sap, not much but enough to see if there was a decent sugar content.  I boiled it down on the stove until it was very thick and then stuck it in a 250° oven to drive the rest of the water off.

There was my yield out of that first quart, 3/8oz.  This would work out to 1.5oz/gallon of sap.  The Lohman's maples yielded 2oz/gal in previous averages, and the previous time I sugared this particular tree I got an amazing 4oz/gal, though reading through previous posts I only yielded 2 gallons of sap (and I can't remember if I got more after that post.)  I suspect the yield was low because it is so early in the season.  In the 2 intervening days I found about a quart each day, and that little jar is now full to the top of sugar.  I have yet to weigh that but I will give weekly totals as this season goes on.

I personally prefer to take the sap all the way to sugar because the first time I sugared maples some of my syrup got moldy.  In a sugar state it is a lot more shelf stable, and I could always rehydrate it into syrup if I wanted.

Oh, and for Sharon who asked about bird poop getting in the bucket, it seems ants are a bigger problem.  Filtration is still the solution.

Ugliest Invention of the Day

So finally today one of my machine designs has moved from concept to reality. When I got my bag of oats to plant it became apparent that i would need to come up with a way to remove the hulls. While contemplating the task I saw my noodle maker machine sitting on a counter top. Could it be that easy? No, of course not. After a bit of contemplation and a discussion with a brewer friend, who regularly has grain processed, the rollers on a rolling mill need to be textured. At an auction a few weeks later I spotted another pasta maker. I built a hopper from scrap sheet metal scrounged from an old computer. Today I finally installed the new drive belt on my century-old lathe. This was the first time I got to do more than a few minutes worth of work on it. Unfortunately the slowest speed is still really fast, not so good when you're trying to do knurling work. Blah blah blah, boring to anyone who is not a machinist. Bottom line is, I managed to texture the rollers. A handful of screws, a scrap of laminate flooring and part of a small crate assembled together to make my rolling mill.

I have a philosophy - ugly but effective is still effective. The mill won't win any beauty contests but it does the job. Now if I can just build a device to separate the hulls from the oats...