Ice Creeping Out

The other side of the lake is starting to go out There were ducks swimming along with ice but they left before I could get the pic Our side of the lake taken from Jack's Landing. Still frozen in It is raking leaves time while we wait for the lake to unfreeze Maple trees are still running like gang busters People ask me about the clear sap. Sap comes out of the tree clear. When you cook it down evaporating the water and concentrating the sugar it turns brown. The brown color in maple syrup is completely natural. Nothing is added. You just boil sap, add more sap and keep boiling. That is how easy it is. Easy as long as you have the maple trees to produce the sap. I have heard of people tapping other trees like birch, box elder and others. Maple trees just have the highest sugar content in their sap and that is why they are the preferred tree to tap Our sap slowly boiling down on the woodstove. We do things completely against the advice of most people making sap. We boil ours in the house. Most people have a sugar shack in the woods and cook it outside letting all the humidity and sugar residue in the steam loose outside. We only cook enough for our family and do not have a system built outside. We have an evaporation pan to put over an open campfire but we get lots of ash from the fire in the sap when we do it that way. Our house is old, drafty and has wood walls that can be wiped down. We just slowly boil it down and have not had problems in the last few years when we have done it this way. If you have wall paper in your house this is a definite no, no as you can steam your wallpaper right off the wall