- Ladies and gentlemen, good morning,
and welcome to the 2017 Garden Expo.
[audience applause]
Wow, this is the most exciting
bunch I've ever had.
Thanks for joining us, we're going to have a great time.
I'm Dan Tyler.
I'm not represented by a particular company.
I'm just a guy.
I'm here because I enjoy what I do
and like to talk about it,
I have, over the last couple of years.
May I give you a few seminar
announcements, please?
Thank you for attending this seminar.
Should there be an emergency during this seminar,
you'll see there are doors in the back,
and some doors over here.
You can leave if you have to,
and as a matter of fact, should you not,
this not be your jam, once we get into it,
there are a lot of exciting seminars happening
now as well, so,
don't let me keep you, if you already
know what I'm talking about, for example,
and want to hear the--
What was that other seminar you were going to listen to?
Fitness While Gardening, if that sounds awesome
to you, although maybe I'll work some of that in.
Turn off your electronic devices,
if you'd please be so kind.
If you have questions, I love answering your questions,
but because we are recording and broadcasting
this session, we'll save the questions 'till the end,
if you could please hang on to those,
so that then we can do a little repeat back
and take that out of the regular
part of this session.
And then there's some evaluations in the back of the room,
the volunteers can bring those to you,
or you could collect one, and I encourage you
to mark all outstanding, or exceeds expectations,
or whatever it says on that session,
and tell what you'd like to hear for next year.
So, 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, 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 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.
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,
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.
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, 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 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.
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, of course,
which can be used into cakes, pies, cookies,
and all sorts of things, especially
when adding abundance-amount of sugar.
Okay, so that--
That brings me to...
...my childhood story
that always kept me from maple syruping, you see.
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?"
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
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 ceiling turned black,
and we never did maple syruping again.
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,
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, for your, you know, your private use,
this is not like a production discussion,
or even, I'll 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.
Maple syrup runs in the tree
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,
it's 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.
So, drill a hole that is about
5/16 inch diameter,
and hang a bucket on a tree, I,
I have a quick slide I wanted to mention also,
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 store-bought syrup,
that many people put on their pancakes and whatnot.
In fact, the only ingredient that 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, your garden will tell you, when those first buds
are starting to emerge.
This is maple syruping time, the early season.
Drill a hole in the tree.
5/16 inch will do, 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, or so, will do.
All right, so once you drill a hole--
This is Dionne, that sweetie from Milwaukee,
she gets, this is,
she's learning their 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.
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, 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, 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.
Hang it up, bucket on the tree,
and collect the sap.
I started just using, I don't know, I took a guess,
use some pieces of pipe, at first,
but that was 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.
Tap a hole in it.
So here's one of 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 keep some extra buckets,
I'm bringing it into my garage,
or someplace 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.
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.
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,
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 easy enough,
but you could also use some pipes 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.
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.
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 you don't want your sap to spoil.
Next,
let's talk about turning that sap into syrup.
The process of sap to syrup is a process
of getting water out of,
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, 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 stern caution, ladies and gentlemen.
You 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.
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.
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.
Don't leave it unattended,
at the risk of the great kitchen fire of 1990,
because 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.
Use your turkey cooker, or something,
a lot of people cook it outside.
All the major outfits have some kind of
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 richer flavor,
use your thermometer.
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 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, as we get close
to finished, 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.
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 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 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.
Again, there are two things you can do with it,
at that point.
You can
just store it, store it in your fridge,
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.
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 they're done.
It's pretty neat, canning syrup is pretty easy.
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 conventional canning jars
are how I keep my syrup.
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, 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,
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 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 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 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?
One, there's cloudiness that comes if you
let your syrup spoil.
Don't deal with that, throw it away, 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.
This is my handy pop-up colander.
You could use anything, I put it on
my pot like so, and use a little bit of 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 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.
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 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.
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,
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.
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 neighborhood,
it's an awesome way to get more out of the whole process.
And again, I can it, label it.
It makes an outstanding gift, it's something I love to share
with my family, and with six taps,
I have more than enough for every pancake breakfast.
Let's see, other tips, I love it on Greek yogurt,
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 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 probably tasted it.
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 head back into the Expo.
A quarter acre,
not a tremendous amount of space, and I'm not trying
to feed my family from 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.
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 grow in a small space.
There's some of my chickens laying out in the sun,
I enjoy growing some ornamental grasses,
because I think they look beautiful, 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.
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,
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,
some buddies and I were hanging around
a little fire pit that we made, 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.
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 tend them.
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, 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,
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.
I get, I don't know, tens of pounds of strawberries,
and make more jam than I can handle, and so,
it is perfectly fine with me to offer some
to a few of the passers-by as they come.
One of my favorite edible perennials, the strawberry.
And so, I also make jam of strawberries and,
and love to gift that.
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,
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 put,
I haven't 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.
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.
[audience applause]