• Tuesday-What'sUP April 17 - 08:46 pm

Carl Kiilunen spotted a maple sap boiling setup in operation, complete with the steam rising from the heated pots. If you've ever wondered what all the buckets, bags and pails hanging from the maple trees this time of year is all about, then wonder no more. They're hung to catch the maple sap that runs from the trees when the temperatures are cold in the morning and warm up a bit during the day. Once that sap is collected, it's processed in operations like this one, to make maple syrup for your morning pancakes! How many of you remember on cold mornings as a kid, grabbing a sapsicle right off the tree for a special treat?

My friends made maple syrup in Marquette when I was a kid. What a treat. Sure wish I had some of it now.

All of us at Pasty Central would like to send a big thank-you to one of our longtime sponsors who have helped make the daily Pasty Cam possible over the years: RMG Family Sugar Bush, Inc. of Rudyard, Michigan. For an abundance of Maple Syrup gift ideas, visit www.rmgmaple.com to order online.

we used to make maple syrup when I was a kid in Chassell. We had the trees in our yard tapped, plus quite a few in the woods up the hill from our house, across from where the Soumis Greenhouse was.
In the morning, the sap used to freeze about an inch or so...we used to eat that ice...it was awesome.
After school,
I used to collect the sap in those big milk containers that they use in the farm...then we hauled it up to the woods where my dad boiled it down.
A lot of work but well worth the effort.

Nowadays, I've seen collection setups that are pretty much automatic....all the trees are strung together with lines fed to a central collection point. no more emptying one gallon cans with this setup.

Dave, Grandpa D. used to always have tapped trees too. I couldn't stand the taste of it and he'd just laugh at me.

There was Bill Nara's sugar bush that was always a fun stop too.
I tapped a birch tree in the spring once. It was sweet after boiling it down, but the taste sure had a lot of other over tones if you get my drift.

I hadn't thought of a sapsicle for years. I guess most of us CC people or UPers have tried collecting sap at one time or another. Sure could use some maple syrup this morning.

Deb, I feel better now that I know I'm not the only weird one who doesn't like the maple syrup. Very cool how it woroks though.

Brooke & Deb, you have another member of your "club". My brother & his family don't like maple syrup, either! We sent them a whole quart of it, thinking that we were sending them a real treat, but they didn't like it, and they never used it. What a waste of good maple syrup! They prefer making their own syrup, boiling sugar & water, & then adding imitation maple flavoring! My family & my parents were appalled at their preferring to mske their own imitation maple syrup & not liking the real thing.

On the other hand, my family loves real maple syrup! Yum! I have a pecan pie recipe that has maple syrup in it that is really good, and we love to add it to many things.

Real maple syrup = yum !!! :-)

Our local nature center has a sugar house, and they dedicate a weekend or a Saturday to making maple syrup to educate the public on the process of making maple syrup every March. That is a great experience for the kids to see the huge vats of boiling syrup in the little log house.

When I've baked glazed sweet potatoes (yams) for Thanksgiving, I
top them off w/ mini-marshmallows, pineapple bits, and then pour
some maple syrup over everything. Nothing better.

Don't forget the Maple Sugar Candy either.

How about maple syrup in home baked beans! Now that's good!

Oh, How I miss that time of year. You can smell sweetness everywhere. Please, let me come home.

Rick & I had a friend John Hill from Skanee who used to make really good maple syrup. Every spring you could find him in his sugar bush.

If some people don't like maple syrup, you can always mix it with regular pancake syrup. I know that has helped people who don't like maple syrup straight. Worth a try.

One of the long time big maple syrup producers here in our area said that this year was probably the worst maple syrup year he had seen. In his words, a total failure!

Marianne, maybe your brother didn't think it was GOOD maple syrup! LOL Seriously, I can't stand the stuff. I need the generic brand cuz it's not so sweet. My hubby uses fruity syrup. In fact, he makes it from the berries we pick.

Deb, I don't think that the real maple syrup was near as sweet as the fake junk he made on the stove & then added the imitation maple flavoring to. It might (?) have been that the real stuff had more maple flavoring in it, compared to his imitation flavored stuff? I would have understood it a whole lot better if he didn't like the fake stuff, either. But, then he can be weird anyway.

It's one thing to not like real maple syrup; I can respect differences in taste. I guess what really bugged my parents & my husband & me was that my brother preferred his fake syrup to real maple syrup, while he demands nothing but real and the best (read most expensive) of everything else, and then he turned up his nose at real maple syrup.

Sounds like he maybe just likes to be confrontational. Too bad!!!

Reading letters of Bishop Baraga, I see the Chippewa Indians made maple syrup too.