Sap is Boiling!

Well, the weather is warm and sunny today, and we are boiling sap!  I'm excited to get going.  Most of the sap in the 5-gallon bucket is still frozen, but I had a stock pot full and 3 more gallons that were all nearly full from the trees this morning, so I filled my giant canner and set it to boil with that sap.

Lydia was really interested in "helping" me get ready.  Here the burner has not been lit yet.  You can see the ice in the sap.

This is the set-up I'm using on the deck.  I picked the deck so I can keep an eye on it from the house, but I put it on bricks so it was well away from the wood.  The burner is attached to a propane tank.  We borrowed the tripod burner from my dad.

Lydia really enjoyed playing outside for a while.  You can see that she's got a bad cold in her eyes.  She's been pretty grumpy and tired today.

This is how the sap looks now, after boiling for about 5 hours.  It took about 1 hour to get the frozen mixture up to a roiling boil.  After it had boiled off a couple of inches, I did add more sap back up to the full point.  Now you can see that it is well under half way full.  When it gets a bit further down, I will pour it into my stock pot and bring it inside to finish it off.  I will also turn off the propane but fill up the canning pot with the ice brick of sap, to hopefully thaw it out.  I have to leave to pick up the boys in a bit, so I plan to do all this right before I leave.

To be continued....