Off-Grid in West Virginia

Sunday

Linda

Sap, Sap, a bucket of sap.

Boiled to Syrup,

Imagine that!

A few days ago we loaded up eighty-two gallons of sap we had stored in buckets onto the back of our flat bed Ford and carted them over to Twolynn’s Farm. As luck would have it Sandi was in the canning house boiling down syrup to its finished product and putting it into bottles. The evaporator was sitting empty in the sugar shack and Lynn only thought he was going to have a day off from boiling sap. He and Sonny started up the wood fire again and poured the buckets of sap into the evaporator. It wasn’t long before things were rolling again. It would be another long day of feeding the fire and keeping a watchful eye on the temperature gauge.

Sandi and I hung out in the canning house watching syrup bubble and spurt in pots on the stove. This is the finishing process before bottling. The syrup has to get to just the right consistency. Sandi has been doing this for so long that she can watch the temperature of the syrup and the size of the boiling bubbles to know when its just about ready. Then she takes a spoon and does a drip test.

Syrup on the stove.

Simmering syrup.

Once the syrup is finished she pours it into the filter tank which contains two to three filters to strain out any sugar sand. The syrup filters down into the bottom of the tank where a spout is located and it can then be poured into bottles. This time she added a cinnamon stick to each bottle before pumping in the syrup to make cinnamon maple syrup. Even the bottle is fancy. That would certainly dress up your breakfast table when you have guests and wait till they taste the syrup. Instant oooos and ahhhs.

Filter tank and bottler.

Pretty bottles of cinnamon maple syrup.

Lynn gave Sonny the run down on the evaporator and Sandi gave me the run down on finishing and bottling. It worked out great. Lynn even took the time to make us a great lunch and it was greatly appreciated.

We should have some more sap to take over in a few days and we should have a gallon waiting for us from the last batch. Sandi puts it up in quart jars and then all we have to do is reheat it to boiling and rebottle in jugs.

Update on the lost garbage can:

We finally found our garbage can that was washed away in the flood. On our way out to town this afternoon we caught sight of it. It had drifted about three quarters of a mile down the creek and ended up down at “Ghost Farm.” We just call it “Ghost Farm” cause no one lives there and its kind of creepy.

Sonny had to pull it out of the creek where it was hung up in debris and full of mud. Its good thing we found it cause trash gets picked up tomorrow.

Our long lost trash can.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2012 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.