Building on our maple syrup keg concept from some months ago, Ellie and I installed a system the new counter top that sits on our dishwasher. For less than $50, we purchased the hardware needed to have a professional draft beer tap hooked into a 13 gallon keg of bulk maple syrup sitting under our sink. Pressured up to 500 pounds per square inch, this guy will give us a year’s supply of maple syrup on demand.

We designed this originally for some of our small- and medium-scaled food manufacturer clients – folks like Ola Granola and Red Kite Candies, who use a significant amount of our maple syrup for their yummy products, and find it difficult to handle large barrels in their kitchen facilities. It turned out, though, that while the flow of maple syrup is fine for personal use, it’s too slow for efficient application when drawing a few cups at a time. But now we’re getting interest from folks looking to install a draft maple syrup system in their own kitchens. Nothing Vermontier than maple syrup on tap.

Lots of comments on the PETA blog show that a good many people think p

unishing farmers for the actions of a different industry might be unfair. While Vermonters would stand to gain, it won’t sit well with our sugarmakers, who tend to stick together. There are some great reasons to buy Vermont maple syrup above all others, but they’re not political.

On the other hand, PETA has a great little boycott logo, with a bloody maple leaf. Would make a great ball cap logo for a Grade B slasher film.

[Glug glug glug. Maple syrup it ain't.]

One friend opted to welcome the drizzle, turning his head up, opening his mouth to take a swig of the falling sap, in hopes of quenching his thirst. This is the last picture I got that stayed in focus, as after he started gagging, I started rolling around laughing. He didn’t realize how much sawdust was going to come down with that sap.

You might note in that picture the funny Coke can antennae hanging from the rafters as well. I put those up there in order to make people avoid clocking their heads on the I-beam we installed there, running outside. We have a small trolley system that can run large barrels of maple syrup or pallets of wood in and out of the sugarhouse. I’ll put up more pictures of that system, but suffice it to say for now that the ugly Coke can strategy has worked pretty well. We’ve had that I-beam at eye-level for a couple weeks, and no one has beaned themselves, which is just short of miraculous.

We broke the 500 gallons of maple syrup mark yesterday in what was probably our second-to-last boil. Today we’re collecting sap, along with more tomorrow, and that’ll very likely be the last boil of 2009. My wife will be very, very pleased about that, but I could stand to have it run a few more weeks. There’s always next year.

[Bosco Take Break for a Moment]

Thetford, Vermont is a strange and wonderful place, filled with interesting people and creatures. Over on the other side of town, up on Houghton Hill, there is a dog named Bosco who makes maple syrup with buckets. We visited him during a slow time last week, taking a few pictures.

Lacking opposable thumbs, Bosco enlists the help of local resident Mike to help pump up the collected sap to the storage tank. Here’s a picture of Mike explaining how the pump system doesn’t require but a hand-tight connection between hoses, and that it certainly wouldn’t break apart and spray sap over everyone.

Back at Tillinghast Maple HQ, an impromptu meeting of decision-makers takes place atop next year’s woodpile. A motion to delay a re-do of Mrs. Tillinghast’s kitchen in light of the burning need to expand the number of taps next year was seconded, but failed to reach the required super-majority.

[It's easier to remember to turn on the valve in the first place]

That’s when you go to the Thetford General and grab some of those silly chemical hand warmer things that they sell to New Yorkers and Bostonites passing through. Duct tape them to the line, and voila, you have a cleared pipe and a working valve.

I think I’m going to leave that up there so that in the fall the deer hunters will have something to wonder about.

One oldtimer rhyme runs, “Wind from the east, sap runs the least. Wind from the west, the sap runs the best.” Our wind (about 5 mph) came from the east, but that’s a pretty lame breeze to matter so much. Here’s a picture of the wind pushing our steam toward the setting sun.

Nevertheless, we’re happy for what we receive, allowing us to finish off our first 55 gallon drum of maple syrup. Now we just need to figure out how to lift it.

The evaporator ran well – one of those days you regret having to shut down because the rig seems to be on a roll, pushing off more steam than seems probable. Here is John stoking the draw-off side while his friend, Addy keeps an eye on the temperature while the maple syrup keeps rolling off. Our stack temperature ran up to 650 degrees, even without the use of softwood.

Speaking of wood, we may or may not have enough this year. We had a truck load of wood delivered some mornings ago. This little pile is really meant for next year, but we’ve started to eye it. Note how some of those sugar maple stems are running sap out of the sapwood, even as they lie cut. I have half a mind to affix a couple buckets on them to see what sort of quantity we could get out of them, especially as they’re visible from the road.

[We are not rapping]

Our water pipes froze underground over the winter, so we called up our local plumber, Dave Hauger. Rumor had it that he’d home-made a special device that would snake down a water pipe, emitting hot water along the way to melt the barrier. He arrived and set up what we quickly called the “Hauger Auger” and set to work.

[Dave and his "Hauger Auger," along with Bone behind him conducting a maple syrup prayer]

Meanwhile, up in the woods, Ellie sought out, and found, vacuum leaks in the Hubbard Hill bush. She took these shots, the one above being a nice shot of the east face of Hubbard Hill, which very clearly wants to grow maple. The one below is of the tracks of a little critter sidling up to a pole-size sugar maple and then attempting to girdle it by eating the bark around the base. This is one of the two main reasons it’s tough to regenerate sugar maple in these woods, the others being the profusion of whitetail deer.

Tonight, we boil.

She and I both think it looks a lot like the governor was caught sneaking up on the tree Hamburgler-style to steal sap. Maybe one of the governor’s rivals has an operative in the maple association’s staff.

This year’s ceremony will take place at 11 a.m. on Friday at a tree next to Mead Chapel in Middlebury, Douglas’s hometown. There will be all sorts of maple syrup treats there for the attendees. In an attempt to create a media event approximating Groundhog Day, some maple syrup folks push the idea that if the governor’s tap shows a sap flow immediately, it’ll be a good sugar year. That, in turn, has led to silly behavior. I know of one farmer whose tree a Vermont governor tapped some years ago, and being cold the night before, he felt obligated to join his wife outdoors with an extension cord and a couple hair dryers to warm up the sap wood sufficiently to allow for a flow the next morning.

That column of water on the left is hitting the ceiling and showering down all over the vacuum room. I had the clever idea to test to see if I’d hooked up the correct plugs by flicking the sap extractor’s electronic trigger. Well, it worked to show me the plug was in the wrong place. Always good to have someone capturing the moment, too.

Today’s run was very, very small. Just enough for a nice shower. Trees are still deeply cold, although tomorrow’s predicted warm rain might change that.

Ellie and I patched up enough vacuum leaks out in the forest to get the Strafford bush up to about 20 bars of mercury. That’s about as high as I want to go. 30 bars of mercury is the vacuum of space. 21 bars of mercury is about where researchers have shown harm can be done to the maple trees (this, despite the fact that the maple equipment dealers insist that 24+ vacuum systems are harmless – they must just know it in their bones). 20 bars is just about right.

Here’s the scale to go by…

0-13 bars – Not much happens (although sufficient for sap ladder construction)

13-15 bars – You might see 125 percent the normal amount of sap

16-19 bars – You’d probably expect to get half again as much sap as you’d get without vacuum

20-21 bars – You might get 180 to 200 percent of the normal sap flow

22-24 bars – Maple equipment dealers get a warm fuzzy feeling. The trees show larger internal staining.

25-29 bars – Maple logs come screaming down your main lines

30 bars – You are in orbit, and you’re unlikely to be making maple syrup

Back in Thetford Center, I got the vacuum system up and going. It started off at 7 bars, which is par for the course. It’s always interesting to see where it’ll settle at first, once the ice melts for the first time in the year. I was able to patch lines (why in the world would a deer want to chew a sap line when my wife’s perfectly good apple saplings are right next to them?) and see the vacuum level rise to 10 bars before it got too late. We’ll get that forest up to 19 or 20 bars by sap time tomorrow. I don’t even want to calculate how far I’ve trudged in deep snow today with tens of pounds of tools on my back. When Spring flirts with us again tomorrow, bringing with her a bevy of sap, it’ll all be worth it.