Nancy’s granola manages to retain a lot of maple flavor. She uses our dark commercial syrup that really packs a punch. She sent samples to us of different mixes and production methods, and after a few months of consulting wound up with this particular recipe. I highly recommend people try it. Nancy’s site isn’t up yet, but she can be emailed at nancysgranola-at-yahoo.com.

I used up the last bit with an experiment; pouring milk into a small cup of the granola and using it as a cereal.

It goes to show that there is room in the food market for people who have a passion for tinkering in the kitchen to discover new ways of doing things that set their product on a higher level than anything else out there. Elaine McCabe’s Red Kite Candies also comes to mind, the company that created a new kind of caramel that is so much better than normal caramels, that they should really be called something different. In both cases, the women were relentless about systematically testing different options and methods.

(Friend's) Vacuum Extractor

After this, we started observing the vacuum levels relative to the precipitation and found that after three or four days without moisture, our vacuum level started a similar decline. Perhaps 5 percent per day. In every instance, a rain event of more than a few minutes brought us back up to normal.

We concluded that our tap holes were shrinking away from the spiles during the dry periods. This sounds like a pretty simple explanation, but I hadn’t heard others making mention of it. If true, I’ve wasted a lot of line fixing time running around trying to tighten a system whose trees were merely parched. It may also be that this is peculiar to the type of spile used (Lapierre). Would be curious if other maple syrup makers have noticed anything similar.

Amber and Steve came the day before to do a pre-walk examination, making sure the walkers get the most bang for their time. They salted some salamander traps in various places.

We’re pretty lucky to have the Vermont Center for Ecostudies right here in the Upper Valley. They’re a group of scientists in Norwich, VT doing hard ecosystem research, but they also make time to help locals learn about the habitats and critters.

Steve found us a good number of interesting things to see, including a couple different types of salamander, a bevy of egg masses for various amphibians and innumerable insects with odd behaviors and feeding strategies. I’ll include some pictures below, but you really had to listen to Steve to see the narrative unfold of how these things work and relate to one another. Visit the VCE blog for interesting stuff and future events.

Two Lined Salamanders

Robin in broken wing display

Caddis Flies Feast on Egg Mass

Beaver Art

Beaver Logging Accident Scene

Passing the Bucket

On 2356 taps, we’ve made 391 gallons of maple syrup so far. If the season stalls and stops (weather predictions are discouraging) this is pretty bad. We have this much largely due to our vacuum system. Locals without vacuum are seeing much worse performance. Take away the sap we get when the neighbors trees aren’t running, and we’d have only half this much maple syrup.

Also our home bush above our house has produced only 20 gallons of maple syrup (500 trees). And it DOES have vacuum. Is south and east facing, low and a very early bush. Tapped it on March 3 and it produced milky sap before we could even hammer in the spiles.

Our new 806 taps on a north-facing hill have performed well with our old 1050 taps on the east face of same hill doing only about as well as yourn.

Grade is very high, making the maple syrup flavor more subtle. We’re just now producing the good stuff, with dark amber and grade b maple syrups.

Moved the boiling operation to our strafford bush. Much more space, added another used r.o. Using oil to fire which is handy but just not the same.

Crew having fun. Life’s (and science’s) problems just about solved during maple syrup boiling discussions. Sure utopia would be reached it the season got cold and allowed us to continue for another two or three weeks.

If you southerners finish up early, come on up and commiserate. But don’t pull those taps yet. Our best hope, again, remains that our weathermen are mostly wrong.

Good luck, -Tig
Thetford Center

My brother is up to help with tapping, along with the regular crew and a suitably odd combination of neighbors and passers-by. We’re doing the bigger Strafford bush first, in the hopes that the season will hold off a few more days, giving us enough time to get to the Thetford bush. (It didn’t.)

We’re employing the fancy-schmancy tap adapters that Leader Evaporator and Proctor Maple Research Center made in hopes of getting more sap out of the trees. We’re putting these on the “back bush,” the new 800 or so trees we’re tapping back on the west side of the Strafford property.

Crew is working well, more importantly, enjoying each other. Really nice to see people of such different walks of life working together.