West Bend, WI – Spring is early this year: the warmer days and freezing nights and the urge to find the drill, clean the buckets, and get out into the woods to see if the sap is running had us doing just that. The music of spring was beginning in the woods and we were ready to go at the Century Farmhouse.
Spring was dripping from the trees as we gently tapped in the spiles with the kitchen hammer and placed the aluminum sap buckets on the hooks.
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Sap flowed cold and clear from each fresh hole we made in the maples growing in the south corner of the Century Farmhouse Woods.
On February 8 we tapped six of the 10 trees we are gathering sap from this year. The rest were tapped on Saturday the 11. We don’t make a lot of syrup, but what we make is special.
At Century Farmhouse, spring has arrived.
For the next four weeks or so we’ll check the buckets early in the morning, removing ice that forms overnight and hauling the sap to the Farmhouse to strain and cook until it is sticky and brown and finished.
The maple sap-to-syrup ratio is about 40:1. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of precious syrup, and over that almost-month we’ll finish about 3 gallons; just enough for ourselves and for gifts.
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My mother, who grew up in the Farmhouse and remembers making syrup in the building that also served as a coal and woodshed, and garage, and smokehouse, will get the first taste of the season. Then we’ll celebrate the sugar moon with pancakes smothered in fresh maple-y goodness.
