Welcome to our first attempt at a blog post! First, a little bit about why we decided to create a blog. Mainly, we love what we do and realized we have a lot to say. As we're sharing our adventures with you on social media, our stories are getting longer and longer...because we're excited! But, maybe a little too wordy for Facebook. Also, we hope that sharing our experiences might help others who are thinking about stepping into the world of maple syrup, beekeeping, starting a family business, etc...
Since we're right in the middle of maple season, that seemed like an appropriate place to start our blog. We have been making maple syrup since 2013, and each season holds it's own challenges.
This maple season actually started before the holidays. We spent a lot of time cutting up downed trees in preparation for boiling. Once the holidays passed, it was time to start looking at the damage to our lines in our maple woods. Initially, it would seem that the earlier we did that, the better, but every wind storm or heavy snow has the potential to take down a line. So, now we wait a little closer to tapping to save us the trouble of fixing lines twice.
This year, we decided to replace ALL of our drops (that includes the tap, the piece that connects to the lines and the tubing in between), which means Jeremy spent many nights making drops. Replacing them should have been easy, but we've never actually counted how many trees we tap (spoiler alert: we're over 700 now), and it takes time...plus we have jobs and families, and the kids are involved in a variety of sports activities. 5 trips later all drops were in and we finally got to tap!! ....and just in time...
We started getting sap the following week and have had a steady flow ever since. I know many of you are ready for the weather to turn warmer, but the more freeze/thaws we get, the longer our maple season extends. Our weeks consist of hauling sap and getting it boiled down, and our weekends are spent splitting wood to make sure we have enough for boiling.
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. This is just a brief overview of what we've been up to, but as long as we're in maple season, we'll try to share some more specific details about what it takes to get the maple syrup on your table...