Part of my family had a farm in Canada when I was growing up and I was involved in a number of these seasons. I was the age of your kids and not helping much. For some reason I remember this being done at night in the dark. I have no one left to ask if that is true.
But you missed something! At a certain point in the boiling, you are supposed to fling some syrup onto the snow. Then all the kids run around and pick up and eat the frozen candy, which I remember very well :)
Yes! We did this part as well :) I loved frozen snow candy made with syrup. People made birch syrup where I grew up in Alaska and we got to do it a few times
Alaska, where in Alaska. I love watching all of those Reality TV shows on Alaska.
Alaska The Last Frontier
Alaska Off the Grid
Yukon Men
Living Alaska
Alaskan Bush People.
Haines, Alaska (in southeast Alaska). My father-in-law appears on an episode or two of Alaskan Bush People. The gold rush one is filmed in my home town (or up the valley where the gold creeks are, but Haines is closest town)
That is really cool @carlgnash. With the destruction of the area that accompanies the mining for gold, what does the landscape look like when they are done.
I'm glad to know you have those memories too. We had many birch trees on that land, but I do not remember getting syrup from them. I was friends with a girl who grew up in "nowhere" Alaska, as she called it. She has all kinds of living off the land stories. This is something to treasure.
Depending on how much sap you are boiling down, I can see it lasting into the night. To boil down the mere 29 gallons of sap and the other batch of 56 gallons each batch took around 10 hours until it was in the bottles. If a larger amount of sap was collected, I could see the boil lasting well into the night.
I love the idea of tossing some into the snow, kind of like a snow cone. Will have to try that on my next batch, as it is going to snow again tonight. Who says you shouldn't eat the yellow snow.😁😁😁.
Thanks for the up-vote and reply.
Always appreciated!
Always humbled!
The site is acting a little funny @firinfunfood this comment was for you. thanks again thebigsweed
Haha! Yellow snow for the win, @thebigsweed! Now that you say this, I know your are right about the time. It was my uncle's place and he had a huge grove of trees. I can remember trudging through. Those were long days as well as long nights. I think we kids missed a lot of it, but I am sure glad for the memories.
I hope you get photos of the syrup flinging. We had many cousins and everyone would be searching for it, since it melts in. And plus the dark lol. I think they had big lights on the trees where they were boiling. This was back in the 1960's since I am old!