Saturday, March 27, 2010

From Start To Finish

































































So i have been pretty busy for the last week the sap finally started flowing properly now that the weather has been cold enough to draw the sap up from the tree roots. I figured it was time to show you all the boiling process in pictures from start to finish. The first step is collecting the sap then we slowly add the sap to the pot on the fire so that we can keep the sap from cooling off to much . Then the magic happens albeit at a very slow and tedious pace. We keep boiling untill we have usually at least two gallons of finished syrup in the pot. This takes about a day to happen. Then we bring it into the house to finish it off on the stove because it is easier to get the syrup to the proper temperature of 219 degrees celcious which is the temperature it has to reach to officially be maple syrup. Then we fine filter it for a second time and bottle it when it is boiling so it seals properly. Well that is the basic process of how to make maple syrup i will have more pictures to add in the next week or two. The pictures above show me doing a few of the activities involved with making syrup. The top two show the buckets i use to collect and store the sap.I had to buy some garbage cans to help deal with the surplus as there is to much flowing in a single day for the fire to be able to boil it all down in a day. The next show the pot boiling down and me with the cart lugging back another round of full buckets. The following ones show the two ways that sap is harvested from the tree the metal bucket and tap are the tradtional method but the plastic tap and tubing is the modern method that is used by the majority of large scale syrup operations now. The pictures below that are of me goofing off and of a drop of sap which is a hard picture to properly time. The last pictures in this epic post shows raw sap against some of the finished product. I will post more in syrup pictures and stories in the next few weeks as i get ready for the spring.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Hot stuff
















So i have something spicy to tell you all about. This winter my brother was able to buy seeds for a new kind of Chili Pepper called called Ghost Chilies which are currently the hottest peppers in existence they were only discovered in the last few years. They are not very common and i dont think they every will be as they are supposed to be quite unbearable to eat unless you are really a heat addict. These pictures are of the first seedlings that are germinating. I hope they will work out as growing hot peppers in ontarios climate can be hard. I dont know whether i will be able to eat these but at least i have the whole summer to think about it.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

time to show some bark


Well its beginning to feel and look a lot more like spring and i decided it was time to unwrap my small apple trees from the burlap winter cover. The burlap helps to protect young and other delicate trees from the worst effects of winter weather and rodent problems. These pictures are a before and after of me unwrapping the trees for the upcoming season. I hope that these trees will really grow this year as the last two seasons have been hard on many fruit trees. I hope to enjoy a wider variety of my own fruit this season but for the next few seasons until my trees mature further many will be in limited quantities.





Wednesday, March 10, 2010

things are really coming to a boil around here



Its the sweetest time of year again well at least for a maple tree. Last weekend the sap began to flow for the 2010 maple syrup season. Currently this is more of a hobby than anything but i am trying to figure out the financial potential of my parents hardwood forest which is primarily maple and oak. I will be posting on this topic over the next few weeks and hope to show you all the steps in the maple syrup making process. These pictures are of the stove we are boiling are sap on. The pictures of levon are just for fun he loves chewing on anything but he loves grabbing chunks of ice and chewing them to bits which is a lot better than a shoe. I will post again on this topic soon happy syrup season to everyone.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Tree bark tastier than you would think.





So the topic of this post is a little random but i figured that it is not commonly known information about a rather secretive animal the porcupine. I have been managing to make it into the bush more regularly now that the weather is improving and have seen a number of young trees that have been stripped of much of there bark. I knew that it had to be something small as no deer or rodent would nimble on a tree to this degree and height. The pictures in this post are of the biggest tree that i have found stripped of its bark likes this. I am pretty certain that it is a porcupine that did this as pine is there usual food source but they are known to eat other kinds when the supply of pine bark is low.