New England has a whole extra season that other parts of the country lack: icky late winter/ early spring. Nothing says March like dirty, crunchy snow that just won't melt and a forecast of 'wintry mix' for days at a time. To temper these gray days, the forests grace us with the first harvest of the year: maple sap.
We have taps all over the farm and eagerly peer in the buckets hoping to see some sap dripping into them. It takes around 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Alternative? Drinking it while it's still cold from the tree.
We filter the sap from the buckets and pour it into an evaporator. Here is Reid lighting a fire to get things going.
That's all steam rising from the evaporator. Sap starts at around 2% sugar content and you have to boil it until that reaches above 66%. It's got a long way to go which is a good excuse to sit inside a natural sauna instead of venturing out into these final snowstorms.
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