Maple Syrup Open House

Here are the offical details about this Saturday's events at Ambler Farm.

You are all invited to our maple syrup open house this Saturday and the following Saturday.  No need to attend both as they will be the same. It will run from 12:30-1:30 and there is no charge. Please park in the soccer field parking lot.  While my intorduction may be similar to our training session for the kids, we will offer several other activities.  We will have logs available for the kids to drill a hole and set a tap, we will have a Native American section where families can hear the story about how the syrupping process was discovered, we will have maple syrup taste testing, our Ambler Farm syrup over vanilla ice cream, syrup for sale and our evaporator will be up and running. The whole family is welcome to join us.

Maple Syrup Part Four

This post is over a week late, but you can get the idea of what is happening to our maple sap when it gets over to Ambler Farm. As of yesterday four gallons of syrup have been boild off. These photos were taken Valentine's Day, Saturday, February 14th. There will be a visitation day this Saturday, February 28th at Ambler Farm with all sorts of maple sugaring activities including Native American story telling about maple sugaring and hands on activities so guests can get an idea of what goes into the whole process.

A view of the sugar shack from near the big red barn.













Families came visiting to check their buckets and watch the boil.













Here's the evaporator.













This is the perfect craft to be engaged in on a cold February day.


























Storage containers.

Maple Syrup Part Three

We had our second after school meeting of the maple syrup project here at Middlebrook Farm School and it was a great showing. The kids are very excited and made quick work of collecting the sap from all the buckets. In fact it kind of looked like an Easter egg hunt.













Pouring off sap.













We collected over 80 gallons of sap in just one week. 40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon of syrup.













We threw a little math in there for the kids by estimating how much they were taking from each collection bucket, and we came about as close as you could. Only 7 gallons off from the actual total. This weekend they are going to fire up the evaporator over at Ambler Farm and everyone is welcome to go over for a visit. We expect to have up to 300 gallons of sap to boil off. Maybe we'll see you there.

Crazy Weather

Some high winds are tearing their way through here today but I was able to get this shot of a double rainbow (you can just make out the second one to the right of the main arc). It's not really a farm thing but it's nice anyway. The second after school meeting of the Maple Syrup Project is today. It should be a good scene. I went out to check the buckets yesterday and some were even overflowing with sap.

Can't be sure...

...but I think this squirrel might be eating my garlic. Do they like garlic? And what is it doing perched up on that wooden stake like that? Anyway, I thought it was a good shot.

Maple Syrup Part Two

Sunday we had a brief meeting to see what was going on in the sap buckets. This warm weather is doing good things for us. There must be close to forty gallons out there, which would give us about one gallon of syrup. As long as the nighttime temperatures keep around freezing or below we should have a great harvest.

There's about two gallons of sap in this bucket.













Checking the sap.
















As we stood there the resident hawk dropped in to see what we were up to.













A nice fire over at Ambler Farm.



















The sugar shack at Ambler Farm.













A close up of the sap evaporator.



















Another shot of the sugar shack. You may be able to see the full moon in this one.



















Final shot of the Ambler barn.

Maple Sugaring Day One

Although you cannot see it from these photos, because we do not have permission yet to show students here, we had a great turnout for our first day of the maple sugaring project here at the Middlebrook Farm School. We hung twenty six buckets in all and with the warmer days coming up this weekend and into next week we really should have some decent sap running.

Our new buckets



















Tapping the sapwood demonstration













This is the old style tap. We don't use these, we use smaller 1/4" taps.













The collection resevoir
















Hanging a bucket


















One of twenty six



















Separating buckets. Not easy in the cold.
















We had some warm days last week so the sap was running and we got a sap-cicle

























































Mr. Meehan drilling a new tap

February Thaw

Hey, the sun came out today.