2021 Maple Syrup Season Preview
It is so hard to believe that we are on the edge of another maple syrup season! 2020, with all of its “unprecedented times” and “new normals” really feels like it just flew by! All of the time at home gave us lots of time to think and plan for the 2021 season so here is what we have changed and how we think the season will go.
The sap lines are all set and ready for the right weather to tap the trees!
Armed with the first-hand experience from last year that our little homemade reverse osmosis system (a machine that helps remove water from the raw sap instead of boiling it) was no match for the quantity of sap that we can collect, task number one was to build or purchase a higher-capacity RO. Social networks are not all bad and I connected with a sugar-maker out in NY that was upgrading their system so we were able to purchase their old unit. Only a couple of years old, this new (to us) RO will remove 50% of the water from 200 gallons of sap per hour. The savings in wood by using an RO is significant, but without the machine we just wouldn’t have enough time to process all of the sap into syrup due to our “real” jobs and life responsibilities.
Our “new” RO after its trip from NY.
With the RO situation handled, we turned our attention to adding more taps to the operation. Luckily, our friends are not far from us and were willing to let us tap on their property! After a day spent in their woods we are able to add another 90 taps to our total for the season. We expect to have 250+ taps this year! The challenge of a new property to tap doesn’t just include processing more sap, but really the challenge is in getting the sap from their to our property for boiling! We have a system that should work, but only time will tell on that one!
The sun setting on a long day of running tubing at our friend’s property.
Many industries have struggled to meet orders this year due to fallout from COVID-19, and one of the companies struggling is the one that we purchase our plastic syrup jugs from! We’ve bought the “Connecticut Pure Maple Syrup” labeled jugs in previous years and were planning to do that again this year, but we learned that they were not available and no delivery date could be given. Pivoting the problem into an opportunity to accomplish something that was in the plan for a future year, we decided to design and label our own jugs. We are very happy with the way that they have come out and it is comforting to know that we have complete control over the branding of our product!
Printing proof of our labels. We designed, print, and cut the labels all in-house and can do custom labeling if desired!
The last big change to our operation this season was the purchase of a new stainless steel filter press for filtering our finished maple syrup! This was a wish list item after three years of crossing our fingers and hoping that the gravity filtering through a “felt” filter would do the trick. We got pretty good at it, but the filtering process was SUPER sticky and we lost a significant amount of syrup in the filter. This new device should allow us to be 100% sure that the syrup will be perfectly clear with a minimal amount of waste and cleanup should be easy! If you are interested in learning more about the filter press that we bought, head over to Smokey Lake Maple Products and check them out!
Syrup has natural minerals in it that make it cloudy. This press pumps syrup through a series of filters and removes the minerals, leaving a crystal clear product!
As I write this the weather is turning cold for a couple of days, but we still check the forecast multiple times daily to try and pick the best date for tapping the trees. There are other sugarmakers in the general area that have already made syrup this year, but it looks like we’ll be aiming for an early February tapping date again this year. With luck, we’ll have a fresh batch of pure maple syrup ready for Valentine’s Day, and I sure hope that is the case because we are running low on our last jug from our stockpile!
Thanks for reading along and being interested in our operation. If you are looking to purchase some of our syrup (once we get some back in stock), come see us in person or check out our virtual Farm Stand at the top of the page!
