...but not just maple syrup.
i just ran across this:
http://cookingwildandfree.blogspot.c...et-syrups.html
it seems several types of trees have sugar in their springtime sap flows.
i live in north florida and there aren't a lot of maple trees here, and the ones we have aren't very big and as far as i know, don't have much sugar content.
i've always thought it would be a good idea to have a source of sweets on the homestead. i even put in a row of sugar cane against one fence, but never got very far with the project because even old broken down cane crushing mills are out of my price range. then, my son told me about the article linked above.
other trees besides maples have sap with fairly high sugar contents! imagine that! sweet gums, sycamores, walnuts and hickories.
i have about a dozen good sized pecan trees on the place though only two of them give good nuts. pecans are like that - good ones that yield worthwhile nuts are the exception, not the rule. two trees worth has always been plenty for me. i've even used some of the less desirable ones for firewood. good firewood - really good for barbecue....
but pecans are a type of hickory, and the article says hickories have sugar in their springtime sap flow. i did a little checking, and yes, pecan syrup was a traditional farm product, though not very common any more.
a little more checking, and i found there are special taps called "spiles" for tapping trees. i looked very closely at one of them on the web, and i'm pretty sure i can make them from some left-over half inch stainless tubing i saved from a job i was working on years ago. cut about a four inch piece, a little slit in one end (side grinder and cutting wheel from harbor freight), crimp it a bit, and i think i'll have as many spiles as i can possibly use.
while i was surfing the spile designs, i was thinking about collection buckets too. in one of the pictures of spiles, someone had hung a plastic gallon milk jug under it. a scrounger after my own heart!
now i'm gonna need a pretty big kettle to boil the sap down into syrup. looking around at the junk i've picked up over a long career as a packrat, i found a 15.5 gallon stainless beer keg. with a little surgery involving my side grinder, i'm pretty sure i can transform it into a dandy kettle. a few bricks carefully placed under it, and i'll have a custom rocket stove heater. no lack of firewood around here.
that's got the hardware part of it pretty well covered. the next part of it involves a little trial and error. i found some references to when the sap begins to flow in maples up north, but that doesn't tell me much about when it happens with pecans here in zone 8b. i'll just have to do some experimental tapping and some waiting.
i have no idea how well this will turn out. it may be a lot of work to produce a little syrup, and be a lesson learned. ...or, it may be a viable home source of sweets. ...or it may be the beginning of a new product - treefrog brand boneless pecan syrup - all natural - from happy pecan trees! available at your local specialty shops - at gourmet prices!
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