Harvesting And Boiling Maple Sap Making Maple Syrup PT I

I had planned to set up a proper maple syrup evaporator and sugar shack over by the storage tents beside the meadow but nature had put a halt on those plans this year. It snowed quite a bit and the area I had prepared for the work is still under snow and ice.

So I decided to make an improvised maple syrup evaporator right out between the off grid tiny house and the chicken range.

This was made using cement blocks I got for free recently. These blocks were seconds from a cement block manufacturing company and they were being thrown away.

I put together the fire pit and then picked up some metal grates from a friend to put over the fire pit. These metal grates hold the large pots where I am boiling down my maple tree sap into maple syrup.

I used my Sony Action Cam and gathered up about 55 gallons of maple sap in total. I literally filled all my buckets with sap. So it was urgent that I get a fire going and start boiling down some maple sap.

The containers over the fire held about 20 gallons of sap to begin with. I continued to add sap during the day, emptying nearly 4 more 5 gallon buckets and a few one gallon jugs of sap.

The trees were flowing like leaky faucets this day and the sap was pouring out. My one gallon jugs were overflowing and the trees were even putting out pressure. The over filled jugs had pressure in them and actually spurted out when I opened them.

It was a busy day boiling down the maple sap and gathering more from the trees as it flowed out. Plus maintaining a good fire is a job in itself.

I had saved up all the branches and twigs from the trees I had cut last spring just for this purpose.

It was raining most of the day but I could not let that stop me. I would lose maple sap if I did not empty some buckets.

At the end of the day I let the fire go out and later (off camera) I poured the boiled down maple sap into empty 5 gallon buckets to keep it clean over night.

Later I will start boiling again and keep adding more maple sap as it boils down in the pots.

Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
https://www.youtube.com/user/techman2015/playlists?view=50&shelf_id=10&sort=dd

Please donate to help keep The Off Grid Project ™ going: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3TQSWXLLRZ6HW

Join The Off Grid Project ™ and The Do It Yourself World ™ forum and share your ideas, tips and projects.
http://www.thediyworld.com/forum

The Off Grid Project ™ is presented by The Do It Yourself World ™.
http://www.TheDIYworld.com