The Snowdrops are in Bloom!

The temperature was 71 degrees when I took this photo 3 days ago on February 24.  For Western New York, that's unusually warm! I think that temperature broke the record.   

Back to reality today in the 40s.

Snowdrops (Galanthus) are bulbs that multiply from year-to-year and are the first to flower in the late winter, sometimes when there is still snow on the ground.


The sap continues to drip from our four maple tree taps.  So far we've boiled down enough sap to make 2 quarts of syrup.

It's Maple Syrup Time (Part II)

After six days of tree tapping, we accumulated 7-1/2 gallons of sap from our four taps. The sap was stored in the refrigerator in empty, cleaned gallon milk jugs.

After sterlizing the glass syrup bottles and caps with boiling water and placing a filter in a quart measuring container, I was ready to go.

Sterlized bottles and caps; container with filter

We have an apartment sized gas stove in our garage that we use to boil the sap and have estimated the cost at about 25 cents of gas per hour of boiling. Not bad!

Sap boiling on the stove

After boiling the sap to syrup stage, it's filtered to remove impurities, called niter.  After filtering, the syrup is clear.

Sediment after filtering

Today the 7-1/2 gallons of sap took 7 hours to boil down to syrup stage.  We ended up with 3-1/2 cups of maple syrup. Pancakes tomorrow! 

Finished Maple Syrup

It's Maple Syrup Time! (Part I)

We always look forward to February when it's time to tap our four maple trees in order to get sap for maple syrup.

Sap flows when daytime temperatures rise above freezing (32 Fahrenheit / 0 Celsius) and nighttime temps fall below freezing.  Best temps are 40s during the day and 20s at night.  The rising temp creates pressure in the tree, thereby generating the sap flow. 

We have two sugar maples (acer saccharum) and two red maples (acer rubrum).  

We used a 7/16" drill bit to drill a 1" deep hole in the tree.  Then the spile or spout was tapped into the hole with a hammer, a bucket was attached to a hook on the spile and the cover was put in place.  The sap began dripping immediately.

It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of finished maple syrup.

Spile in place and sap beginning to flow 2/6/17

Large sugar maple tree with two taps.