hey it's tanisha spain host of mid-american gardener and as promised we are out on the road and today we're in washington illinois visiting one of our panelists who you will recognize and we are going to be making maple syrup so ella thank you so much for letting us come to your house we really appreciate it so tell us what we're going to be doing today i understand we're going to start here and then go all the way to the finished product so i'm excited oh it's an exciting time and to be honest tanisha we would be starting or i had started about the end of february sometimes the middle of february if it starts to really warm up you need to have days where the day temperatures are like today just beautiful in the 50s and 60s but at night the temperatures drop below freezing so what that does is um you get a lot more upward flow as the root system is absorbing water and nutrients and moving up to the expanding buds and eventually to the tree leafing out in the spring we want to capture some of that sap that we can then evaporate the water out of it and concentrate it into a maple syrup so this is the perfect time of year perfect day right yes so tell us what's the first step when you're walking through your property how do you identify which tree you would like to use okay well first off you could tap any type of maple but the sugar maple has the highest concentrations of sugars in its sap so it's makes the easiest amount of sap if you call it easy but i know that this is a sugar maple so you have to know what kinds of trees you have you can successfully tap large diameter birch trees as well as walnut trees and i do have walnuts but i think maple syrup makes the best sap you want to have a tree that's at least maybe 18 to or larger inches in diameter and on these larger diameter trees you can put anywhere from two to three taps the taps that i'm using are these little metal um taps i use them each spring and it's not very high tech we're going to use a drill and a 5 16 or or 7 16 drill bit and we're going to find a smooth patch of the bark where we can just drill right into the sap wood for about an inch and then you're going to come out clean the wood off of that drill in one more time to make sure that the hole is clean and then we'll use a rubber mallet to just put in our tap okay so that's that's it that's step one that's step one okay so so you've identified your tree you're gonna put in the taps okay so you said find a nice smooth spot so here sure now height wise is it just about convenience you don't want to be trying it's it's mostly convenience for you um that way um one it has it up off the ground so maybe some animal you know isn't going to disturb it um but mostly it's for the convenience of you okay all right so here i go right yeah so here's good and you said about an inch yeah and you're going to tip it up slightly yeah right there just like this okay there we go okay you have to push hard i want my husband to know i'm using a drill well here sometimes yeah i gotta change the there we go oh see it's dripping all right already okay so so you can pull it out yeah wait how do you reverse yeah okay and then just go in again about the same amount yeah just push in okay back it out you can see all this uh wood fibers coming out but it's very damp you know so look at that so this yeah it's dripping right away so here's our rubber mallet and our tap would be my lovely assistant yes yes so that's going to go in here we want to make sure all the everything's out of the hole just like this yeah exactly a couple of taps yep one more do i get it yeah i think so yeah it's not going anywhere and actually the wood will expand around that and probably hold it in place and then we're seeing the the liquid come right out now wow and and what would this you can taste it it tastes like water does it a little a little like i'm drinking straight from a tree that's right yeah so now you know that uh if you were out in the forest you could find water in the spring okay now we need to get our collection yes and it's such high-tech collection i use washed out milk jugs here and i've made a little hole up at the top here of the jug this will collect about three quarters of a gallon and we just hang it on the tree there's that little lip on there there's yeah there's a little lip and sometimes it doesn't want to go on i just am amazed by how quickly that started to run so it's there we go you know i guess my biggest thing was i thought we were going to have to go farther into the tree but it was just very little yes it's it's less than an inch we're going in and then once these don't continue to once the treat the day temperatures and night temperatures equalize and by mid april the sap is done running really substantially and i'll just use a a pair of pliers and i'll take that out and it'll seal over and you can see where um other in birds have used at this um this tree so we've got i was going to talk through damages about just some of the holes and we've seen some insects on the back of the tree but it doesn't disqualify this tree from being used just because there are um some damage or wounds as you called them earlier this is still a perfectly good treat attack right oh most definitely and you can see that there probably was at one time some type of injury where the sap has come down and kind of darkened this bark and uh again this tree can be tapped for probably about a month here in central illinois so um the idea is we're going to collect this uh tree water you know and they do actually bottle tree water you can look it up and you can this particular thing is like clear yeah really yeah it's i'm sure pasteurized but yeah they do that too well you're missing out on another uh income stream i i must mean but uh 40 of these makes one of these so the finished of the finished syrup so it it is labor intensive and uh the the maple growers you know maple syrup harvesters are always looking for new varieties and actually there is a new hybrid maple that they are now lining out in fields just for tapping oh wow and um of course they're much more high-tech this is the low low-tech collection method hey it works yeah now since it's early in the year i wanted to ask you about some of our pollinators yes um there's a lot of insect activity out here and so is this something that some of our insect friends you know can enjoy um while they're waiting for other flowers to bloom and other you know flower things to open is this a source of energy for them or can it be i think so i really don't know the life cycle of a lot of different insects but i can tell that if there's a wound especially from the ice storm damage we've had in a lot of the trees there's broken branches and sometimes you can even see little icicles of sap as they drip in the spring and freeze so i'm sure that lots of insects are visiting this maybe not for nutrition but for moisture and and for water um and uh definitely the reason that we've got lids on here is that this is a collection place for flies and uh we we don't really want to trap them in the liquid and and then i do have a strainer to strain them out okay so let's go walk and look at some of the other trees that you've got tapped and just so people can see um the amount of sap that you have that's that's right that you collected a tree this size can each can make maybe as much as a gallon and a half or two gallons uh from each collection site on a on a really good day wow so within a week you potentially could make with quite a number of taps you know a gallon of maple syrup and that might last you a whole year just maybe unless you've got grandkids and you're right eat pancakes pancake eaters yes okay so let's go check out some of the other all right okay okay so i just tapped my first tree which i can't believe was so easy i thought that was gonna be more involved harder to do so you've got jugs hanging from several other trees that's right and you collect how many times a day what's your what's your schedule like twice a day usually i'm um i go out around 10 or 11 to see what's happened overnight normally there's not much activity during the the the night hours but once daylight comes it seems to really pick up so i'm going to collect what we've got and rotate in with empty jugs and then again after supper i'll go out one last time just to make sure they're not overflowing and uh that's my that's my routine that's the routine have you ever come out in the morning or in the evening and it was overflowing oh yeah yeah yeah then it's just dripping down the tree and i'm thinking oh i'm missing that sap oh nuts are there some what effects you said the temperature affects the flow um and the size but what about the age of the tree you know i know that kind of correlates with size but is there anything there i don't i don't think so i i really i don't know there are some wonderful youtube videos out there of people doing just what i'm doing and um and that's what made it kind of fun for me to want to try and having a large enough tree yeah you know you can't start at the nursery size really the bigger the tree the more robust the flow is what i've experienced and that way i can put two taps on a tree and that's only one visit to that tree rather than 15 smaller diameter trees so that it's more of convenience yeah bigger tree yeah i'm all about that the convenience of it all yeah okay here you can see that one of the taps has really slowed slowed down you know i don't think there's as much in this one see this was one of the original ones now the one that's lower that's not um moving it quite as quickly if you if you untap that and say move it to the other side of the tree or something like that is there a chance that you would get more of a oh i i definitely think so um i did take some of them out and redrill them and i also checked to make sure that they weren't plugged when it kind of slowed down when they slow down usually something's happening especially when the other side is doing so well and when they get plugged up is that um what gets in there just that soft sort of tissue that we pulled out on the other side right right maybe it didn't get cleaned out as well or maybe it slowed so uh slowly that it just um you know the sap kind of dried in there and filled up the hole once the tap has kind of dwindled and stopped then i'm going to take it out because i want to be able to preserve it and i want the wound to heal or seal over as as quickly as possible and do you do anything when you uh take your taps out do you do anything to seal the hole or just kind of let nature no i'm i'm a firm believer on yeah i'm just going to let god do it it's like god do it okay so now after the collection i saw some jugs on the porch then they go into the they have to cook is that what you call is that the term right well you have to evaporate the um the the water out of it to concentrate the syrup and they have professionally they have these large evaporators that um would do that but we're going to see the low-tech way that the eleway right i did i started out working with i built an outdoor kitchen and we have so much wood and i would have a lawn chair and i would sit out there and if you rapidly boil it it evaporates pretty quickly you know and um but that was a whole day and i had to store the sap you know so that i could keep feeding it into the pan yes and so i had gallons of the sap in my spare refrigerator and i thought there has to be a better way and i think there is okay so let's go check it out the next step okay so as you can see we brought some of these jugs back here that we brought off the trees and so ella has this whole system set up on her front porch um to now take the sap and move it into syrup or or the phase right before it becomes syrup so first of all you can smell it it smells like um almost like vanilla yes i think it has a stronger vanilla it does it does okay so tell us so what do we do you pour some in and just kind of tell us how the magic happens okay so what i have here are two little turkey roasters because i've got so much sap and i did get these second hand and you can see that i've got them set at their highest setting and i have the two uh plugged into the same outlet and we run them just during the day and so throughout the day i can look out my window and see if this you know how it's evaporated because this is the idea now this is part of that uh cooking down phase and one year i tried to do it in my house and actually the humidity the windows were just running with moisture and so what i do is i use these um little roasters to concentrate the sap and then i'll finish it off inside to make the finished syrup so when we were collecting sap you know sometimes you can get some insects in it and so you've got to be careful because you've got a hole so you have to pour it on its side but i just pour it through the strainer to catch anything and um and this is just a constant process right as soon as you're able to add more you do right exactly because again it's full it's 40 to 1. so here i am and i'm just 40 collected gallons of staff sap boils down to one gallon of syrup that is mind-boggling because that's a lot of work even though we kind of joked about it not being a lot of work that's a lot of work so so yeah we've got you know a couple of butterflies and a couple little ants yeah but uh again we're we're not going to worry because you know i can take this little strainer and take off um normally i'm not going to catch any insects in the hot liquid but um you know i want to keep it as clean as possible and so what we're doing is we started out with the clear water that you saw and then when we've uh then begin to lay down after this begins to cook you can see that it's it's starting to darken yeah even if just a little bit but you can hold up now the maple syrup the finished product and you can see we still have a long way to go now tell me a little bit about this is probably the same thing yes um yeah this is me is this like a halfway point um no that's this is the end so um once this cooks down it it it takes it takes i i it takes a week so all the sap that i've collected in one week at the end of the week then i finish straining it i'll pour it through you know a fine strainer into a stockpot and i'll have maybe five inches of liquid total i let these boil down to at least by half and then those two go into one after it's been strained and then i'll boil it on the stove um until um i'll watch where the line that i started and i'll go again by half gotcha and that can take as long as as four hours wow and you want to start out on maybe a medium to high heat but you've got to keep watching it and turning it down so that you don't scorch it or it it can bubble up over the top before you know it and it's a terrible sticky mess so once the sap is finished and i've let it cool and i let it sit overnight and then i'm going to pour it into some mason jars and and seal it and i want to store it in the refrigerator um but as you get down towards the bottom there is a little bit of precipitate that comes out of the syrup and that's what uh this is so the last bit of the let's say the dregs the dregs um i pour into a glass and let it sit out but this is what they call maple sand maple sand and you can taste it i sure will no don't just with your finger maybe oh god i got it i don't want like a big ol no okay it's edible and but it's grainy right it is grainy um i like the flavor though yeah and so i thought well i can't throw this away no so what do you do with that i put it in cake or brownies yes it almost has a um a caramel yeah sort of aftertaste but but it's it's quite grainy so it will not dissolve yeah so i i still have this and i think it's still edible kind of cool i hope it's still edible you just fed it to me i did no it is it is but i i disguised it with brownies yeah you know kind of thing but i so is that what this is yes that said at the bottom and then as the the um the year progresses and we use we use it um it will actually crystallize you get like a clear rock candy crystal inside of the jars too so it's it's just fun this this year is the most syrup i have ever made it's unbelievable how well it's doing and how much fun it is to share and to eat yeah and i i have it with yogurt i mean you can use it as a honey substitute a sugar substitute you could put it in your tea and it really has a i think a really nice maple vanilla-y flavor yes so how many times a day do you come out here and add um maybe three or four at the end of a day would you say you add you know a whole one of these or a couple of these to your roasters i want to be empty and have them all ready to go for the next day so okay my goal is to boil everything that i've harvested in one day got it so today my goal is to finish up the last two gallons which you know um it's going to run until 10 o'clock tonight or later depending on how long basketball goes so the very last step that you said when you take everything inside and do it on the stove um and you've been doing this for a few years is that kind of your best practices sort of you know trial and error you found that the easiest way at the end is to do it on the stove right right i want to just make sure that i can control the finished product and that way i can leave it set so at night we just unplug them and here you can put the lid on do the honors and that that's it for the night that's it start out the next morning and then i started again what a cool hobby you know so yeah so and you know if you want to quit halfway through you just take the taps out and it kind of just drips out on the trunk of the tree but and that's it yeah what would you say to someone who may have been maybe a little intimidated or you know we're not in the country you know ella lives in a neighborhood so it's not something you have to have a farm to do if you've got a maple in your yard or any tree really i mean this is something that you can do at home so what tips advice maybe some starting materials very basic i love that i'm a functional person as well so everybody's got milk jugs everybody's got roasters what tips do you have for the new person who thinks you know i might try this well you can go online and you can order the taps so you have to have some type of tap and they sell collecting buckets and they sell tubing and they sell all kinds of things to all kinds of different hobbyist levels but i found that you know just having a half a dozen taps or something is a way to get started because you know you have to have a way to get it out of the tree and then you have to have a way to be able to boil it down and i started out doing it you know the pioneer woman way over a big roaring fire over a fire making a day of it yeah but this is so much easier i can we can leave for the afternoon you know i i can't let it run all night but i can certainly manage this with my time and activities and it just makes such a wonderful product so i have some for you today awesome that's one of my favorite parts of this job is i usually get plants or something to snack on um from one of you guys and the taps you got you showed me your taps they were like two bucks right yeah so again not expensive everybody's got milk jugs and you can get a tap for under three bucks and just give it a shot and i believe that some of the um home stores did sell some different taps and i've tried some other ones there were some bigger ones but i wanted to minimize the damage to the tree and i found found that those little ones that i had was enough to it's enough to keep me busy awesome so this you keep these in your fridge this is this is an example of the finished product right right and that's what i'll i will um i'll put in a nice little um uh picture for pancake breakfast or waffles um i've used it on um like oatmeal or yogurt there's just there's smoothies you can add it to i mean you can use it just like honey and we just love it and my family my extended family it's like ella are you going to be making maple syrup now there's the expectation every year that you're the maple syrup lady you got to start selling it okay well thank you so much for letting us come to your house and showing us the process i tapped my first tree today that's exciting and we're going to have everybody try some of your finished products so thank you thank you for watching hope you learned something and maybe you'll have more folks out there making maple syrup so no i hope so thanks you