Welcome to A Victorian Year in Ontario

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen, the year is 1865, Her Majesty Queen Victoria has reigned since 1837 and we are in the midst of a prosperous era. The purpose of this blog is to record the daily round of chores, tasks, trials and triumphs of our household in rural Upper Canada (now known as Ontario). We have embarked on an experiment to live a year as close to the way it was done in 1865 as we possibly can. We will post our remarks and await your comments, suggestions and critiques. So join us as we travel back in time.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Sap, shacks and syrup oh my!

Greeting all, Ken here. The sap is running full tilt and we already have had about 80 litres of sap partially boiled with another 180 litres waiting in our storage bins. I'm just about to head out and gather more after this post (about 5:30).

I built a little sugar shack this year but my design leaves much to be desired. I'll have a better one for next year given my experience with the design flaws of this year's model!

Last year we made about 20 to 25 litres of syrup from around 800 to 900 litres of sap. I'm trying to keep a better record of sap collected and syrup made so I can get a feel for how much we might have spent on syrup in the store. Margaret said she heard on the CBC that it will be a banner year for syrup. I guess we'll know come  April.

That's all for now. Stay dry and warm.
 Ken

2 comments:

  1. I'd meant to ask...we tasted some of Margaret's syrup that she'd given to Neil and Karen. Seemed to have a distinctly lavendar flavour. Any idea why? Recipe? Herbal additives? Specific type of maple? It was very unique.
    v

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  2. Wow interesting . Nothing added. Regular maples just really old beautiful trees. I haven't noticed that flavor , have had some people say there is a distinct smokey flavour. Interesting. Can't explain that one ..sorry.You will have to try this years batch and see if it seems the same.
    M

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