We've been making quite a bit of the maple syrup here. The sap is really running full bore now. Here is a picture of the new cooker one of my cousins built for this year. The ugly one in the picture is me. The good looking one is my child bride.

very cool

Yea it's running good here to in N.Y., my Father in Law has 8 Big Maples tapped now and the barrels are filling up pretty good. Nice Pic and Enjoy the Taste of Srping!
(BP)

Neat!!! Nothing better than wild hog sausage and buckwheat cakes with real maple syruple.

I was talking to a friend of mine and he said the sap is real sweet this year. So he is really having a hay day. He gives me all the syrup I need. He makes about 15 gallons a year and some in his family will not eat the stuff.

That is a nice cooker you have there. Is your syrup dark or light this year in color? The stuff I got last year was really dark but had a real nice maple flavor. Do you make any maple hard candy or sugar?

When a friend I "used" to make syrup . All we had was a large stir pot over a wood fire. My friend took field stones and mortar, and made a fire pit that fit the large stir pot, with a small chimney off the back and an open front to feed the fire through. We'd go to the mill in town and get their oak and maple scraps and then just sit out there and make a day of it, cooking down sap. It was kind of fun. But a lot of work also. After his stroke, we lost interest in a lot of things we used to do, since he can not hardly get around.

The sap is running here also. My wife's buttermilk pancakes, from scratch, with fresh Maple Syrup life can't get any better. Thats a real nice cooker and it looks like your better halfe has everything under control.

No sugar maples down this way. (The closest thing we have to "running sap" is me walking back and forth between the shooting bench and target frame.) But spring is crawfish season and we look forward to that in the same way you guys await maple syrup.

Hey Flounder, I can tell by the knees of your jeans that you are NOT the dominant member of that team.

Its been worst season on record for my family this year here in Mid-north NY. Its about done now. Very short season. We invested in a new evaporator last year. Put out 600 taps, and only gotten 35 gals syrup. Never had a year this bad yet, and we've been doing syrup in my family for around 50yrs. I've also heard from several others in NYS experiencing a bad season.

Our first batch of sap was super sweet and dark too. We got a gallon of syrup to each 25 gallons of sap. Making it is kind of addicting.
Art

My friend said they were doing 34/1 although I can remember some 40/1 years. Have you heard that you can make it out of popular sap also? I was told that, but was also told its about 80/1 so that is too much work.