University Place

Syrup From One Maple Tree- You Can Do It

[Dan Tyler, Maple Syrup Hobbyist]

It is almost spring in Madison. I know it’s mid-February, but February is the new March, I guess. It does vary a lot by year, and we’re going to talk today a little bit about maple syrup

[slide of flower]

– including when to get maple syrup. I’m going to talk a bit about my own experience as a gardener, so I’ll warm up

[Dan Tyler]

– with just a little bit about that, and don’t worry, we’ll get into the maple syruping content.

If you are here about the specifics of maple syruping and you already know many of them, I’ll give you a quick teaser, ’cause it is this simple. Wait for the temperature to go above freezing during the day, and below freezing at night. Poke a hole in a tree, hang a bucket on it, collect the sap, boil it for a real long time, can it, drink, that is the entire process. And if you know all of this, or you are already doing this, then you might find my session to be more rudimentary than you’re looking for, but if you’d like to go through that in a little more detail, with a little bit of commentary and whatnot, then join me for today, I’m glad you’re here.

This is an introductory session, maybe I’ll give you a few intermediate topics. Let me tell you a little bit about my experience, it might be similar to some of yours.

It’s been 10 years now, that I achieved my lifelong dream of home ownership, when I got a quarter-acre yard, here in Madison. Yeah.

[slide with a photo of Dan in his backyard creating a garden bed from an old sandbox]

And it’s outstanding, as many of you know, to have a little place to call your own, that you can tend and do what you will with it. And I immediately set about, on the skill level that I had, at the time, to start a garden, a raised garden bed, in the back. Which, I had some great hardware for because there was a sandbox, the previous owner had, right in the middle of the back yard; I thought, Well, I used to play in the sandbox, but I don’t need it anymore, so I took the sand out, put it in a pile, moved the box out of the center a little bit, dug another hole, put the dirt in another pile, then I put the sand down in the bottom and the dirt up on top, so it could be gardened, and well-drained

[slide with a photo of the completed garden in Dans backyard]

– and this was the start of my gardening career, back then. Maybe like many of you, and I planted spinaches and beets, and lettuces, and used plastic fence.

[Dany Tyler]

There’s a rabbit in the scene, I think the, those of you watching on the television can’t see my laser pointer, you can spot that. Anyway, we share

[slide with a photo of a relative of Dans expanding the garden by dumping a wheelbarrow full of sod]

– and it wasn’t too long, that a 10-by-10 garden box was well within my grasp, and so we added another 10-by-10 garden box off the back of that. Now you’re seeing some peppers, and beans, and experimenting

[slide of Dan building his chicken coop]

– different things.

And then, like a lot of people, we were chatting before the session about chicken keeping, and I thought that sounded like a terrific idea, and I brought – you can have up to four chickens in the city of Madison, many other municipalities have chicken ordinances that allow chickens to be kept. You can’t have the neighbors object to it, there’s no roosters, no slaughtering on-site, and no more than four hens, that’s the rules in Madison. And find the chicken session, here at Garden Expo, if you’d like to know more about backyard chicken keeping, or find me afterwards, it’s easy, and quite fun.

[Dan Tyler]

If you can’t slaughter them on-site, you raise them for eggs and companionship.

You also might find out that chickens die easily because everything likes to eat chickens, including raccoons, and possums, and foxes, and all of these predators, so it isn’t necessarily real easy to keep them, but we do our best.

I’m getting to the syrup, see, I’m, this is a build-up, because syruping is kind of simple.

And then, after the two 10-by-10s didn’t quite fit, I thought, well how can I expand that just a little more but keep bunnies from eating everything. I’m a big proponent of lasagna gardening. Without having to spray vegetation to kill it off and garden, it turns out, you can just mow the grass real low, smother it with some of your recyclables like cardboard, and then put some of your compost, or dirt, on top of it, it smooshes the grass, and then you can establish a new garden on top.

What can you grow outside the fence? The bunnies won’t eat rhubarb

[slide of Dans girlfriend with an armful of rhubarb]

– of course, which can be used into cakes, pies, cookies, and all sorts of things, especially when adding abundance-amount of sugar.

[slide with a photo of Dan licking sap from the side of his Maple tree]

Okay, so that – that brings me to my – my childhood story that always kept me from maple syruping, you see.

[Dan Tyler]

I was, I don’t know, maybe 10 years old, and playing out in my parents’ back yard in Ohio, and it was early spring, and something had nicked a tree, and so there was some liquid running down the side of the tree, and my mom stuck her head out the back door and said, Dan, see that tree over there? Lick it. I said, What?

[return to the photo of Dan licking the sap from the tree]

She said, Yeah, lick it. And so, I did, and found out that it was very sweet. It tasted just like maple candy. Indeed, that was maple sap running down the side of a sugar maple tree. And as you might do with a 10-year-old, and my brother, and parents, we said, We should tap our maple trees and make maple syrup, this sounds like fun. And before the internet era, I guess we just made something up, and

[Dan Tyler]

-got taps into the tree, found some buckets, and we collected sap, and we brought it into the kitchen; we had some on the grill, outside. We had some in the kitchen. We boiled, and boiled, nothing seemed to change. We went out to do some errands, the pot boiled in, it caught on fire, the – the the ceiling turned black, and we never did maple syruping again.

[laughter]

And then something like 20 years later, here I am, on my quarter-acre in Madison, thinking, How can I get more out of this small space, that was where the build-up came in, you know how there are – I’m discovering there are lots of ways to find abundance, even on a small space, and I have a couple of maple trees right here.

Well, they are silver maples, so I thought, Well I couldn’t make maple syrup out of a silver maple, you’d use sugar maples to make maple syrup. But not so, point number one, sweet sap comes from many maple, the sugar, the red, the black, also box elders, and silver maples, and birches, and palm trees, all make sap that has a sweetness, and can be made into an edible product. Perhaps even other trees, but the whole maple family does. They all have a little different flavor, and they have a little different sugar content, so, there’s that. You’re probably accustomed to having maple sugar from the sugar maple, but many different kinds of maples do, so that’s your first empowerment.

I only have two of these trees in my yard

[slide with a photo of a tapped maple tree with a bucket under the tap and a squirrel on the side of a maple tree]

– but I thought it sounded like a good plan to tap and try again. If I could avoid the great kitchen fire of 1990, then maybe it was worth a go again. And in fact, I brought some of my stuff along, to indicate to you, that if you want

[Dan Tyler holding up maple syruping paraphernalia]

– for your – for your, you know, your private use, this is not like a production discussion, or even, I’ll – Ill disclaim against, you know, there are rules when you sell agricultural and food products, I’m not talking about those. This is all it takes. Let’s have a look.

[Dan distributes paraphernalia on a table and grabs a bucket and returns to podium]

Maple syrup runs in the tree when – when nature decides, it is not really up to us. It runs when the days are above freezing and the nights are below freezing, which, is often in mid-March. Last year was February 24th. And since I got home from work yesterday, and the sun was up, and it was 44, I poked a hole in my maple, and the sap was dripping on February 10th, this year. You can really only tell by the forecast, so if you’re curious about doing this, get ready now, or even try today; it varies a little by the tree’s situation, its – its sun exposure, and whatnot. The tree will tell you when it’s time, but you can watch your 10-day forecast. This is an advantage that us hobbyists have over major producers, who need a lot of start-up time to get ready for their season. You may have heard last, I think it was last year, a lot of people had a lot of trouble with their large-scale syruping operations, because the season came so early. Well, we’re watching the forecast, looking for those above and below freezing days and nights; that’s when the sap runs.

I’m supposed to have you hold your question ’till the end. If you say it real quick, I can.

[unintelligible audience question]

We’ll get that.

The – so, drill a hole that is about 5/16 inch diameter, and hang a bucket on a tree. I – I have a quick – I have a quick slide I wanted to mention also, my – my – my sweet girlfriend, living in Milwaukee, at the time, asked me, as many of you may have asked, What are the ingredients of maple syrup? How you make it? Which is not a totally unfair question when you look at the ingredients of a –

[slide with a photo of the ingredient list of a store-bought maple syrup]

– store-bought syrup, that many people put on their pancakes and whatnot. In fact, the only ingredient that –

[slide with a photo of the UW-Madison Union Terrace in late winter]

-we are looking at, is maple sap.

Here’s another way to know when it’s time, if, at the Memorial Union, the ice is still frozen, but a bunch of people are congregating outside in shorts, and whatnot, because they need spring, that is, kind of, when, you know, when it’s warm but cold, or –

[slide with a photo of Dans backyard with flowers just starting to bud]

– your garden will tell you, when those first buds are starting to emerge. This is maple syruping time, the early season.

[Dan Tyler]

Drill a hole in the tree. 5/16 inch will do –

[slide with a photo of Dans girlfriend drilling into a maple tree]

– use a sharp bit if you can, ’cause it makes the hole cleaner. Doesn’t have to go in very far, because the sap runs around the outside of the tree. So, you really just have to get through the bark, an inch and a half –

[Dan Tyler]

– or so, will do.

All right, so once you drill a hole – this is Dionne, that sweetie from Milwaukee –

[return to the photo of Dans girlfriend drilling the side of a maple tree]

– she gets – this is, she’s learning the – the real process, you know. You want to involve the other people. Involve your kids, involve city slickers in the process, if you can. It’s a great way of sharing the joy of syruping.

[slide with a photo of Dan holding a drill pointing to the place on the maple tree where he is going to drill]

If you just drill a hole in the side of the tree, it will dribble out, down the side of the tree, which of course, you can’t collect; you could lick, but you can’t collect. So, you need some method of getting the sap away from the tree –

[slide with a photo of a tap in a tree and a bucket underneath the tap, along with a photo of a spile superimposed on the upper left]

– and into your bucket. This item is called a spile. They are commercially available in metal, or plastic, like this picture on the upper left. Some of them even have an integrated bucket hanger. I like to do it an old-fashioned way, I make my own out of, just a piece of wood, maple, that I then whittle to a little point in the end, and drill a hole through, and tap into the side of the tree. I like this because it’s free –

[Dan Tyler]

– it’s natural, and actually, the wood seems to kind of set nicely in wood, because it’s a little softer product. It’s pretty easy; just use the next size smaller drill bit, and you can make these for free, at home. They really only last one season. Sometimes it’s fun to pass something around, so I’ll send this around, if you want to have a look at it.

[Dan leaves podium and gives home-made spile to audience member, then returns to podium]

Hang the bucket on the tree and collect the sap.

I started just using, I don’t know, I took a guess, use some piece – pieces of pipe, at first, but that was a little – a little much. The smaller hole you can put in the tree, the less stress you put on the tree. People often ask, Does this hurt the tree? We don’t want to tap a tree that’s smaller than a 12-inch diameter, or a rule of thumb, if you hug the tree, that’s a good size maple that can sustain a tap. And then a large maple can take two, up to three, never more than three taps in a single tree. I never put in more than two. A lot of liquid is moving through this tree, and a little poke-hole, I don’t think it seems to notice, and frankly, from my perspective, my relationship with my trees is so much different, so much better, now that we have this maple syruping operation together. I feel that there’s an overall health to that system, that seems to be good for and my tree alike, depending on how you look at it. Nevertheless, let the tree be large enough, and don’t overdo it.

[return to the slide of the tapped tree with the spile photo superimposed on the top left]

Tap a hole in it.

[slide with a close-up photo of the spile in the tree and the bucket underneath]

So, here’s one of the – the wood spiles in action. You can’t leave your sap out in the sun; it’s kind of like milk, it’ll spoil if it gets warm, and usually, this is all right, because when is the sap running? When the temperature is about 40 degrees, or the temperature that’s probably in your refrigerator, and it’s cold overnight. So, when I collect the sap, I – I keep some extra buckets, I’m bringing it into my garage, or someplace –

[Dan Tyler]

– where I can keep it cool, in between the time I’m collecting and processing it.

Here’s a quick summary of the collection process.

[slide with an overview of the collection process listing all the steps that Dan has gone over]

Again, many kinds of maples produce sweet sap. Nights below freezing, days above, that’s when the sap runs. How long does the sap run? Well, once the spring kind of runs its course, after a period of time, of nights below freezing, days above, the buds will start coming out on the tree, and the sap will simply stop running.

So, even if you have your spiles in and the bucket’s hanging there, the sap will stop coming out of the tree and then you’re done. The – a short period of time before that, also, sometimes the sap sort of changes its flavor, it can become a little rancid. You’ll know, if it becomes cloudy, if it –

[Dan Tyler]

– the sap that comes out, right, it’s just, taste it, and it has a little sweetness, it’s very clean and fresh-tasting. At the end of the season, I don’t know how to describe it otherwise. You’ll know, it’s cloudy, it doesn’t smell good. Don’t try to boil it, because it’s not going to get any better if you do.

I also make my sap in small-ish batches, so that I don’t make a mistake, and, you know, end up with something that isn’t so good later, and have a bunch of it, trying to be mixed in with the stuff that is good. We’re going to talk about processing just next.

Drill a hole, if I didn’t mention it before, slightly angle it down, because this is a gravity process, it tends to drip down. I will note, some people, they could be on the hobby scale, or especially on the larger scale, use spiles and tubes, so they can use a central collection, a larger bucket, or some kind of a vat. You can try this as well. Again, I’m not sponsored by any particular agency, but I do know that Farm & Fleet has many of the products that we’re talking about, and as do other ag kinds of stores.

I think individual buckets are – are easy enough, but you could also use some pipes and – and whatnot.

Hang the bucket at a workable height. This is another one of those lessons learned, you see, because, I don’t know, five pounds or so, a gallon, and this holds three gallons.

[Dan Tyler holding up a three-gallon bucket]

This is not light when it’s full. I just hang it off the tree with a little hook like I’d hang up coffee cups. It does the job. There are many ways to hang a bucket on a tree, and some of those spiles have a hook attached. Well, if this gets very full, sometimes the bucket could give way, or you’re trying to manage it and it spills on you, and of course, what is sap, but sugar, and that’s kind of a mess. So, a workable height is a tip I have for you on how to hang your buckets.

Watch the sap drip.

[return to the Collection steps slide]

It goes at different rates, if it gets very warm during the day, it can really drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and you may want to come home at lunch time and put a new bucket up. And otherwise, some days it’s cooler, like this morning, it’s dripping very slowly.

Collect it promptly and keep it cool, because –

[Dan Tyler]

– you don’t want your sap to spoil.

[places bucket on the table and grabs a large pot and slams it down]

Next, let’s talk about turning that sap into syrup.

[slide with a photo of a large sauce pan with sap in it on a stove]

The process of sap to syrup is a process of getting water out of, extra – extra water out of it, so it becomes more, more viscous, more condensed, which you do by boiling. The larger operations – large operations will use a large, shallow, pan of some kind, to get a lot of heat onto the liquid, and a lot of surface area to evaporate. You can do this at home –

[Dan Tyler]

– it’s a little less efficient, but a simple stock pot is a perfectly fine way to boil sap, on a small scale, even on your stove, but let me give you a – a stern caution, ladies and gentlemen.

[slide with photos of various pots boiling sap on a stove with a thermometer in one]

You –

[slide with a photo of steamy windows in a home]

– can picture your windows on Thanksgiving dinner, when you’re making some mashed potatoes. Well, sap is going to boil at a ratio of something like 40 to one. Right? So, that means 40 gallons of water in the air, for a gallon of syrup that you end up with.

[Dan Tyler]

Or scale it down to what you’re likely to actually get, you know, 40 pints of water for a pint of syrup. It’s a lot, it takes time, and it takes management of steam. I have a small-ish galley kitchen, and I did in fact rig it up with a couple of fans, so that a fan blew it off the stove.

[return to the photo of the steamy windows in a house]

The window, which, right behind me, with the box fan in the window, and the steam blew right out there, and I was able to manage it pretty well. But, again, on the record, be very cautious about boiling sap in your house.

[Dan Tyler]

Don’t leave it unattended, at the risk of the great kitchen fire of 1990, because it – it could boil in, and you’d, you know, you’d ruin the sap, of all things, but, also, it makes a lot of steam, so think about this in advance, a bit. There are many other ways you can do it.

[slide with a photo of boiling sap outside on a grill]

Use your turkey cooker, or something, a lot of people cook it outside. All the major outfits have some kind of indoor -ex -ex – indoor/outdoor kind of set up, you know? For example, a shed that has a lot of air movement. A lot of people use a wood fire with a large pan. You could, at home, use some kind of cooker, or a fifth burner, or something. Use your – use your good judgment so you don’t burn anything down, and use your good judgment about managing this steam, that’s really the key takeaway, as far as boiling it down.

[Dan Tyler]

But you do not have to construct a large, stainless steel, thin pan, in order to get some maple syrup. So, why don’t I leave the rest of that to your creativity. But here are a few, here are a few stats –

[side with the title Boil it! showing the proportions of syrup produced to sap tapped from Dans trees for the years 2014-2016]

– from my backyard operation. I tap six trees, so I run six total taps. And in 2014, I collected 62 gallons, and made 23 pints of syrup. That’s 21 to one. This changes; these are the same trees, so it changes by year. The amount that it rains, the way the winter goes, will change some of the characteristics of your syrup. It’s hard to say. And then, in ’15, I got 20 – 64 gallons of sap, at a 29 to one, that note, the times, it was mid-March to beginning of April, and then last year, we had an early spring, an entire month earlier, I collected 83 gallons of sap. I threw away about 10, because it got very warm at the end, and some spoiled, and made 27 pints of syrup at a 25 to one.

[Dan Tyler]

This year, who knows? Time will tell, I do like to keep a tally as I go, because it helps me know, about when my syrup is going to be finished, that is, if I have put in 25 gallons and I’m getting down to, or 25 pints, I’m getting down near a pint, it does help me know about when it’s finished.

[slide with a photo of sap in a pan boiling with a candy thermometer in the pan]

So, that’s kind of the basics of collection; the basics of processing; and then, how do you know when it’s finished?

You can tell when maple syrup is finished by its sugar content, 66 to 67 percent sugar content. How can you tell when it’s 67% sugar content? Well, you can get a – a – a device that measures the sugar content, or, thanks to principles of chemistry, you can know that the sugar content is such when the boiling point of the syrup is 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point of water.

[Dan Tyler]

And the boiling point of water, some of you may come from different elevations, or atmospheric conditions, it’s usually 210.4. But, what is the boiling point of water? It’s pretty much the boiling point of the sap when you first put it on. So, that’s one way you can measure it, right? Because the sap is almost entirely water, and then watch your thermometer ’till it’s just more than seven degrees more. It will change as you go, you’ll see the sap getting darker.

And if you’re just gonna, if you’re not gonna try to can it and store it, and you’re using this in a small scale, go ahead and enjoy it, take a spoon out, and have some. If it tastes like syrup, use it. If you under-cook it, it’s usually just a little lighter, and it’s a little runnier, it’s not going to cause you harm, it’s just a little waterier. But if you really want to achieve that stuff that looks like what you’re accustomed to, and a – a richer flavor, use your thermometer.

[return to the slide with the photo of the pan with sap and a candy thermometer in it]

See, this really is the entire setup, so here’s a candy thermometer. I make a couple of marks on the back of mine, to remind myself of the boiling point of water, and what I’m watching for –

[Dan Tyler holding up his candy thermometer]

– in my syrup. And over the years, you get a bit of a sense for what it looks like, and, and how long it takes, and of course, if you keep track of how much you’re putting in, you can know about when it’s going to be ready to be done.

Watch the surface of this –

[return to the slide of the pan of boiling sap with the candy thermometer in it]

– as we get close to finished –

[new slide with a photo with a close up of the bubbles of the boiling sap with the candy thermometer in it; the bubbles being smaller and more plentiful]

– the bubbles change. And this is an interesting part of the process, because after sitting there for weeks, watching the buckets drip, and going hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, boiling, and adding a little more, and boiling, and adding a little more, and boiling, and adding a little more, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, the bubbles will change, the temperature will go up, and it’s done, boom! Do not miss this part of the process.

[laughter]

[Dan Tyler]

The bubbles will continue to rise, they’ll go over the sides of the pan. It’s sugar, remember, so they’ll go into the burners. The sugar content will go over it, it turns into candy, and then [slams podium] it’s burned. So, I mean, that’s a little bit dramatic, but it is kind of, almost that fast. Don’t miss it. Don’t leave your syrup unattended; don’t try to run it while you’re away at work. Be there for your syrup.

I set a timer, whenever syrup is boiling, I have a timer in my pocket, 20 minutes, for example, until the end, when I sit in the kitchen with it, which is a great idea; it’s just like your laundry, right? You put things in the dryer, you’ll say, of course, I’ll come back from whatever I’m doing, and then of course, you’ve forgotten the dryer, and everything is wrinkly. But the problem with this is that you burn your syrup, and the whole season comes and goes, and you’ve missed it. I digress, watch it at the end, and when it’s seven –

[return to the slide with the photo of the close up of the sap boiling with the candy thermometer in and the small and plentiful bubbles]

– degrees more than the boiling point of water, that’s your 67% sugar. Or use a sugar meter, if you want to get more sophisticated.

[slide with a photo of two mason jars full of syrup]

Again, there are two things you can do with it, at that point. You can just store it; store it in your fridge, in – in which case, it lasts for a long time. I’m reluctant to say that it lasts indefinitely, but it is one of these stable foods that lasts for a long time in the fridge.

[Dan Tyler]

If you want, you can also can it; can it hot, at 180 degrees, probably many of you are, are into canning already. Since it’s just been boiling at above 210, you have taken care of the process by which the canner handles what’s inside your cans, so, people often ask, Do I need to put it in cans, and put it in the canner and process it? It’s essentially just done that, but do sterilize your jars, and lids, as usual. Let the syrup, I let it cool a little bit, to about 180, and pre-heat the jars so that you don’t crack anything. Then fill them almost all the way full, they don’t want much for air, put the lids on, and [slams podium] they’re done. It’s pretty neat; canning syrup is pretty easy.

[return to the slide with the photo of two cans of syrup]

I have heard that if you lay them on their sides, it improves the seal; I’ve tried both ways. If you are going to lay them on their side, put some towels underneath just in case they leak, but con-conventional canning jars are how I keep my syrup.

[Dan Tyler]

I usually use ones that are a little smaller than usual, because syrup is one of these fine things, that it’s nice to have smaller amounts open at a time, so it can be fresh. I love to gift syrup. People have a lot of stuff today and coming up with the perfect Christmas gift is not always easy, but I tell you what, a half a pint of homemade maple syrup goes over very well, year after year, even if it’s not so much a surprise, on the second or third year. I do get a good reception from it.

If canning isn’t your jam, then just drink it –

[slide with a photo of Dan and his girlfriend drinking syrup from small tea cups]

– use it. It doesn’t even have to leave the stove if you don’t want it to. I mean, I don’t want to say that we should go crazy here, but –

[Dan Tyler]

– hobby maple syrup making, is a joyful process where you make something that is extremely simple and extremely delicious. And so, I try to nurture in myself, I try to get past that notion that I need to horde all of the good stuff in life. And we try to be sure that we fill up a couple little demi-task cups with some syrup and just do nothing else, but taste it for a couple of moments, at least every season. It never gets old. It’s just delicious.

So, we can a bunch, we keep some in the fridge, and – and if you’re going to make a couple of pints, you know, don’t sweat it. Have some, have some on your pancakes tomorrow morning, keep some in the fridge, drink some right on the spot. If you let it cool just a little bit, tip, use a silicon spatula, you can get the drippings out of the pan and have them right there, there’s another couple of tablespoons, because the ratios are so small, folks, that if you’re talking about one tree, then you’re going to not want to lose a tablespoon of this stuff, at the end.

That reminds me, how do you keep, how do you keep all the – that sounded like the start of a joke – no, how do you – how do you keep all the stuff clean? Maple syruping is also, you know, it’s a one-ingredient thing, and it’s sensitive to other stuff, so I use blazing-hot water to wash all this. The – the sugar washes away, I don’t use other products and whatnot, to keep my buckets clean. Remember, that the stuff is boiling for 10, 12, 15 hours, so, that’s taking care of a lot of what’s in it.

Do you want your syrup to be crystal-clear, or can you live with a little bit of cloudiness? There – one, there’s cloudiness that comes if you let your syrup spoil. Don’t deal with that, throw it way, if your syrup is milky, or gets warm, or tastes sour. But I mean inside, how do you get some of this stuff out, because there’s bound to be a little bit of tree bark, or stuff that falls in, or, little bits of stuff, so.

[Dan grabs and holds up pop-up colander]

This is my handy pop-up colander. You could use anything, I put it on my pot like so –

[places colander inside pot]

– and use a little bit of cheese cloth.

[holds up cheese cloth]

Some people will use wool, or there are some commercial products, Oralon, I think is the name, that strain out fines, from syrup, and so, as I collect it from the trees, I’ll pass it through that once to get some the the chunks out, and then as I bring it in to the house to put, or to the boiling area, to put on the stove, I’ll pass it through that, or a similar product again, and that takes out most of the stuff, the impurities. The microscopic impurities are being boiled. The chunky impurities, this is a good way to get them out, ’cause there’s always some stuff in there. And beyond that, I’m not particularly concerned about a little bit of dust, which is mostly, you know, tree particles, in the bottom of my containers, and then when you’re pouring them out, you just leave the bottom a little bit. It’s up to you, how many times you want to strain it; you can strain it hot, again, at the very end of the process when you’re – when youre dealing with packaging it. It’s up to you, some of that is cosmetic, some of it is taste, so that’s kind of the – the straining process.

So, here’s the summary, summary of how you know when it’s ready.

[slide titled Its ready when listing the steps to which to pay attention]

Watch the bubbles; pay attention to it; don’t leave it unattended. 66 or 67% sugar content, it’s that 67% is a magic number because then when you can it, it will become shelf-stable and you can put it in your – in your pantry, outside of the fridge. The 7.1 degrees above boiling, so here’s a quick computation for a typical day in Madison, that looks like 217 and a half. So, you can use the thermometer, or a sugar, sugar content meter. Drink it, refrigerate it, can it hot, be sure you use your normal sterilization process for your canning equipment.

[Dan Tyler]

And that, is the processing in a nutshell.

I’m trying to think, since I’m supposed to be holding questions, people help me if I have forgotten key points, but I think I’ve hit the basics here. We’ll circle back at the end if need be.

Here are a couple of other comments that I would like to share with you about the process of backyard maple syruping. You can get a lot more syrup, twice as much actually, in general, if you tap two trees rather than one. Now if you have one tree, I encourage you to try this today. If your neighbor has a tree as well, why not share what you learned at Garden Expo this morning with them, and I tell you what –

[slide with a photo of a family watching Dan tap a maple tree]

– it is more than twice as pleasing to me to see these kids run out in the morning and look in that bucket, and lick that tree, and be part of the process, than it is for me to make even something that I love so much at home. Twice as much sap, they help me collect it, I do most of the boiling, they do a little bit.

[Dan Tyler]

We share the product in the end. My neighbor on the other side doesn’t have kids, she thinks it’s nice, doesn’t have really the capacity to be involved, but is more than happy to let me tap her trees. So, spoke with her about that, and so I hang a couple of taps on those maples too. It makes me part of my community. It helps connect me to my neighbors. And it also allows me to process about as much sap as I want, as a hobbyist, from those six taps. Each tap makes about 10 gallons of sap, typically. So, if you can share this in your – in your neighborhood, it’s an – its an awesome way to get more out of the whole process.

And again, I – I can it, label it.

[slide with a photo of multiple jars of syrup in cans in a box with Dans label on the top]

It makes an outstanding gift, it’s something I love to share with my family, and with – with six taps, I have more than enough for every pancake breakfast.

Let’s see, other tips. I love it on Greek yogurt –

[Dan Tyler]

– with, sometimes with strawberries or other fruits, or nuts. I love it on oatmeal; I love it on steel-cut oatmeal. I love it on waffles, pancakes, French toast. It’s a terrific sweetener in many dishes. Now, it has a distinctive flavor, so use your, heck, use your palate, but it can replace sugar in many of your dishes if would prefer to have something from your own backyard than from somewhere else. You can, that could be a taste decision, that could be an ethical decision, however you look at it. But the other layer of – of what I guess I’m trying to convey is that there is a – there is a joy and abundance –

[slide with the title Abundance with a list of thing to do with your syrup – share, collaborate, gift and love]

– about syruping that goes beyond just the thing itself.

By the way, you can make candy as well, maple candy, as you get, you’ve – youve – youve probably tasted it.

[Dan Tyler]

It’s just a matter of boiling it a little more. I don’t have a lot of expertise with this, but you can use your candy thermometer, and the same sap, and carefully, carefully, process the same stuff a little more, so that you can get a different kind of candy consistency. Those things go down easy, don’t they?

It’s 10:08, which is where I wanted to be. Maybe, bear with me for a couple of minutes, and I’ll share with you a couple of thoughts about abundance in my yard, and then I’ll take some questions about syruping, and things in general, and – and we’ll – well head back into the Expo.

A quarter acre, not a tremendous amount of space –

[slide of Dans girlfriend with a row of small pumpkins on a wooden bench]

– and I’m not trying to feed my family from it – it, but there is a lot more to it than just a simple raised-garden bed. So, this is kind of from my small and abundant talk, I’ll give you a quick nutshell recap, in case I give you something to think about.

The places where I grow some of the lettuces, or maybe my strawberry patch that are spring-intensive, you know, you can plant your pumpkins over, so you get a second round of additional delicious stuff in the same space, in the fall.

[slide with a photo of freshly picked garlic on a bench]

Garlic is an easy one to grow, it, if, I guess if you have the soil and light for it, but it’s another thing that propagates itself well, and that is easy to – to grow in a small space.

[slide with a photo of Dans chickens sunning themselves]

There’s some of my chickens laying out in the sun, I enjoy growing some ornamental grasses, because I think they look beautiful –

[slide with a photo of Dan with his arms full of wild grass]

– but in a small space, can I use what I grow for ornament in a productive way as well? For example, if I like chickens, and I like ornamental grasses, I can make nest boxes out of the same grass.

[slide with a photo of a garden bed in Dans backyard]

I have – I have, over the years, kept shrinking the size of my lawn in favor of edible perennials, bee-attracting flowers, and native perennials and whatnot. I think perennial gardening, first of all, is super-easy –

[Dan Tyler]

– it’s great for the working professional person because it takes care of itself. That’s another great benefit of native plants, they are that way because they are accustomed to being completely automatic. So, you’ll probably learn about some of these things. I’m kind of giving you a tour of other topics you may want to learn about here at Garden Expo this weekend. Again lasagna gardening is a great way to smother grass and replace it with something else.

I want to show you, the course of what, what about eight years will do. Here’s when I first moved in –

[slide with a photo of Dan and two friends hanging around in his backyard when he first moved in]

– some buddies and I were hanging around a little fire pit that we made.

[slide with a photo of Dans backyard with a small bench and a chicken coop]

And then, later on, you know, it’s got perennials, and a chicken coop, and to each their aesthetic, you know, but I think that this is a lot more productive use of this little space.

[slide with a photo of flowers and shrubs growing in Dans front yard]

And then, of course, the question came, what can I do with my front yard? Because all the sun is in the front. But, you know, that’s where all the people are walking, it’s by the road, I don’t know. Well, I just took the leap and put strawberries up in the front, because strawberries love sun, and some sunflowers actually volunteered there, so now I – I tend them.

[slide with a photo of a close up of Dans strawberry patch]

And the strawberries, being up front, turned out to be a terrific move, because again, they’re perennials; strawberries take very little maintenance. They like to be thinned once in a while, but they’re easy, they’re delicious, they come right after the maple syrup.

See, syrup is terrific, because, you have like –

[Dan Tyler]

– Christmas, you have the New Year, and then things start getting hard, and it’s dark, and very cold, right? And then when you just start getting really sick of that, but you can’t go outside and do anything yet, it is maple syruping season. It starts getting a little lighter, and then you can be occupied with syruping. And then when that ends, the buds start coming out on the trees, and your strawberries start growing and your crocuses start coming up –

[return to the slide with the photo of Dans strawberry patch]

– and so, then you’re in the next season. So, maple syruping is this brilliant spring-time opportunity to get yourself finally back outside again.

I am not concerned about having strawberries up by the street, because I, gives me a good conversation starter with neighbors. And are those hoodlum kids going to eat my strawberries? Well, sure, because I can invite them to have some.

[Dan Tyler]

I get, I don’t know, tens of pounds of strawberries, and make more jam than I can handle –

[slide with a photo of three baskets full of ripe strawberries on a kitchen counter]

– and so, it is perfectly fine with me to offer some to a few of the passers-by as they come.

[slide with a photo of multiple jars of strawberry jams and preserves]

One of my favorite edible perennials, the strawberry. And so, I also make jam of strawberries and – and love to gift that.

[slide with a photo of a large open backyard and three men playing catch]

So, if you love big, open spaces, because it is a place for you to play, or this suits your lifestyle, of if, dogs, and kids, and like to throw balls, don’t let me disparage that, but on the other hand, over a period of time, even a small yard –

[slide of a photo of Dans backyard with flowers and gardens and very little lawn]

– I think, can be made far more, in my opinion, abundant in what it gives me to eat, and things to look at, and even, perhaps lower maintenance. I haven’t – I havent put – I havent put herbicide on my lawn for years, and using compost, and the leaves from the lawn, these are all topics of little, other sessions that I’ll be glad to chat with you about afterwards, or you might want to learn about on your own, this, or in the coming years, but a great way to get a lot out of a small space.

So, thanks for bearing with me, that was my little thought about abundance, and circling back to maple syruping, here’s another layer of the yard, right above us, right in front of us, these trees.

[slide with a photo of Dans maple tree with a tap and a bucket on it]

All along, every spring, make sap that we can share with them, and with our friends. I encourage you to give it a try, and I’ll open it up to questions. Thanks everybody, for coming in.

[applause]