Liquid Gold

[Sam_MaineBottles]

Hi All -

During this time of year I develop a particular interest in a certain type of bottle, one that is modern, very common and that has no value when empty. It's your everyday salad dressing bottle. I recycle these to hold the pure Maine maple syrup that I make during March. This has been a late season, about two weeks behind schedule. The sap has been flowing fairly steadily but it doesn't look to be a great year. I usually make 8-10 gallons of syrup but I'm guessing that it will only total around five gallons this season - enough for home use anyways. There's a lot of work in making maple syrup (40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup) but I enjoy it, to me it's one of the first real signs of the coming of spring.

Later - Sam

 

[BRIAN S.]

Hi Sam ,
Great looking syrup you have there ! I have heard my Dad talk about when he was a kid going to the building (I can't remember what he called it ) where my Great Grandfather was making syrup. He said they had huge pans and a big bellows that they pumped to feed oxygen to the fires. He said it took hours of boiling the sap to get the liquid gold . Dad said he loved to go when there was a freshly fallen snow ..... as they would take the snow and some syrup and make him some kind of maple candy.
Maple syrup is costly to buy..... but most people don't realize the work and hours that goes into making the finish product. My Uncle has made it from sap from Hickory trees here in Tennessee . As we don't have the huge sugar maple lots here like you all do in the New England area. Thanks for sharing....It brought back the memories of some great stories of past times ! Brian

 

[IRISH]

Mmm I love Maple syrup, we get a lot of the fake rubbish here but we can still get the real thing, it's expensive but worth every cent [] .
Most of the syrup we get here comes from Canada.

 

[Ye Olde Prospector]

Hi Sam,
Sure is hard to beat good old homemade Maple Syrup. My kids always liked "snow candy" too. See ya at the bottle show soon!
Cliff