How To Make Maple Syrup | THE COMPLETE GUIDE!!! | CANADIAN NORTH

Sap flows best in the early spring when temperatures fluctuate between around -5 C at night to +5 C during the day or 20 F at night and 40 F during the day. Sunny conditions also increase sap flow. We know Natives collected maple sap, used it in cooking their dishes and stews and turned it into maple syrup and maple sugar or maple candy. However, what we don t know is whether this was born out of excess, and "for fun," or was required in order to survive. Before written history, records are simply born and kept through legend. Further, we don t know whether it s possible to produce a net caloric return from tapping and collecting sap, boiling, and producing sugar. It s been said by many survivalist that tapping trees can be done to better a person in a "survival situation." Just tap a tree they say, and it s full of delicious sugars. On a good day, it s possible to collect 4-12 L or 1-3 gallons of sap. That s about 20 to 90 drips per minute. This might sound like a lot, but when you have to boil off the equivalent of 39 units of sap to produce 1 unit of syrup, and even more to produce maple sugar, you re really in it for the long haul. The ideal tree is the sugar maple, but red, or black maple will also do. A suitable tree has sap that is around 2% in sugar content - but trees can range from 1-5% sugar content. Other maples produce sap for syrup as well, but the results might be less desirable and require more sap to produce the equivalent amount of syrup due to lower sugar content. The leaves of sugar maples are simple, opposite, three to five inches long, broad and usually five-lobed. Bark is gray to brown, smooth, but break into long irregular plates that loosen along their vertical side as the tree grows larger. Sugar maples frequently grow to 60-100 feet tall. Reports suggest that the Chippewa of the great lakes region where exporting large volumes of sugar in the 1800 s to the Northwest Fur Company as a means of trade. Woodlots were managed by families and small groups. Typical lots would tap around 900 trees. Estimates suggest that a single person can manage around 600 taps by themselves. The sap was collected and boiled and sugared down as the season wore on. It was reported that they produced around 15,000 pounds of sugar. Some other estimates suggest that exports reached up to 1,000 pounds of sugar per person which is an astonishing 3 years worth of calories, and up to 117,000 lbs of maple sugar, but the numbers become massive at this point. We re talking about 5 million lbs of sap - 120 lbs of sap per tree - and 74,000 trees. Sap to syrup is about 100 gallons or 378 L per cord of wood. So they d need around 100 cords of firewood to turn this from syrup to sap. That s a lot of wood! To move that much sap around is 5 million into around 123 people for the tribe, 420 man hours a season is around 90L/hr labour or 200 lbs of sap/hour! Amazing numbers. Use code "WoodBeard" to get 10% off ASAT Camo: www.asatcamo.com Merch (t-shirts): https://teespring.com/stores/the-wooded-beardsman