Sugaring in Barton

A Barton sugarhouse

Because we couldn't find any sugarhouses that were boiling sap on Maple Open House Weekend, I asked local maple producers, from whom I always buy my syrup, if they would allow us to photograph in their sugarhouse when the weather allowed them to cook. They kindly agreed, and we visited on April 3rd. The harvest was late this year, but plentiful. The syrup made here is the best, but because of sugarhouse thefts in Franklin County this year, the farmers asked me not to identify their farm.

The sap is boiled in this big evaporator.

Looking into the top of the evaporator at the boiling sap.

Maple syrup is done when the temperature of the boiling sap
is 7° higher than the boiling point (which depends on altitude).

We prefer syrup made with wood fires.

The smokestack from the wood hearth.

The stack temperature in sugarhouses is 1,000°.
Typically your woodstove stack is about 250°.

The back of the evaporator.

These lines carry the sap from the trees in the sugar bush down to the sugarhouse.

Farmers regularly snowshoe out to the sugar bush to check the lines.
A heavy snow the day before our visit broke tree branches
which fell on some lines, breaking them.

At the sugarhouse is the vacuum pump and the reverse osmosis filter.

An old sugar maple near the sugarhouse.

When the sap reaches 219°, the sugar content is tested again.

When the sugar is perfect, the syrup is filtered and pumped into this container for bottling.

Our syrup at home.
Right: Grade A medium amber that was made on the day we visited.
Left: Syrup from the last, darkest run last year.
The dark syrup is what we use for cooking.

I wish we could tell you where to buy this syrup because it is the best. Each farm's syrup is different because of weather, which run of the season the syrup is made from, the soil, and other variables. This farm makes the best syrup because it has a thick, smooth vanilla butter tone to it. There is also a suggestion — not a taste or smell, not even a hint — of wood smoke. When you cook with this syrup, that sense of wood smoke reminds me of being in the steam of the sugarhouse. Contact me if you want to know where to buy this syrup.

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How to Wreck Your Applesauce

Two experimental apples — A and B.

Do you remember Coxeter's Pippin? If not, please click that link and go read it. A geometry professor claimed that coring an apple his way was the most efficient way to core apples. His claim has been nagging me for days now, so yesterday, while making applesauce, I decided to test his theory.

I had 8 apples for the applesauce and selected two that were most identical in size. I weighed each on my digital food scale after I peeled them. Then I cut both of them equatorially (see the photo in the link of the original post above). For Apple A, I used Coxeter's method for coring. For Apple B, I used my husband's coring method (which, if you remember, he had taught me before I learned Coxeter's method). Suddenly, I wanted to see how much waste was produced with my own method, so I selected another apple, Apple C. I didn't care what size Apple C was. By this time. I just wanted to get this damn experiment over with and have supper. My method for coring apples is traditional: I cut the apple in half longitudinally and then, using a sharp knife, I cut the core out along with my own skin, nail and sometimes bone, creating a lot of blood. I weighed the stuff that I cut out of each apple and created a chart (below). Then I calculated the percent loss of each apple. If you would check my math I would appreciate it. I was grouchy when I did the numbers this morning, so I probably made a mistake.

The debris from the Coxeter Pippin Method.

Apple Method	Apple A Coxeter Pippin	Apple B John's Method	Apple C traditional
Peeled Weight	3.625 oz.	3.5 oz.	3.625 oz.
Cored Weight	3.25 oz.	2.50 oz.	2.125 oz.
Percent Loss	10.3%	28.5%	41.3%

Discussion

The Coxeter Pippin Method resulted in the least waste, therefore it was most efficient. But I didn't like it. It was tedious and time consuming. I had to dig those little skin-like things out of the apple because they did not "fall out" as Coxeter said they would. My back was killing me as I huddled over the pieces of apple. My method was most familiar so I was able to think of other things besides apples and even hum my cooking song. John’s method was comfortable and somewhat enjoyable because I knew I could become expert at it if I tried it enough. It went fairly quickly, too, but not as quickly as my method.

Conclusion

• I am going to continue using my method for coring apples.
• Don’t pay attention to cooking advice from geometry professors.
• Don’t use maple sugar in your applesauce. It tasted awful.

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Sugar on Snow Supper

Amelia, me and two of her friends went to the Sugar on Snow Supper tonight at the Orleans Federated Church. There were plates of ham, potato salad, beans, cole slaw and rolls on each table. Then we were given our own bowl of snow, warm pitchers of maple syrup, pickles, and plates of plain baked doughnuts. We are stuffed! It is too cold outside tonight to do anything except watch movies. We hope you are warm as we sit beneath dogs, cats, and blankets while we watch Ratatouille.

Technorati Tags: sugar on snow 

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Photo Hunters: Water

Maple Sap
All photos will open in a new window when clicked.

The weekend of March 23 through March 25, 2007 was Maple Open House Weekend in Vermont. I visited the Wilwood Farm Sugarhouse in East Charleston, Vermont for these photos.

Approximately 90% of the sap of the maple tree is water. It takes approximately 40 gal (151 liters) of sap to make 1 gal (3.78 liters) of syrup. It takes a lot of energy to boil off the water in the sap. Below, you can see the steam from the evaporator in the sugar house.

The excess steam rises up this vent to the roof.

The vent opens to the rafters above. Sugar houses have a distinct roof structure that allows the steam to escape to the outdoors. The roof can be seen in the last photo.

In order to boil off the water from the sap, the wood stove is filled every 10 minutes with wood.


On the opposite end of the evaporator from the stove is a bucket (below) that captures even more pure, clean water that empties from the evaporator:


Here is the Wilwood Farm sugar house with its distinct roof. The steam was blowing to the ground on the opposite side of the house at the moment this photo was taken. When you drive in Vermont in March you quickly learn to identify where the sugar houses are making syrup from the clouds of steam pouring out of the roof vents. (The dog below is named Nikki.)

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Drink Maple

Seen while driving south on Route 5 between Sutton and West Burke on Saturday, February 17.

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