Producing Homemade Maple Syrup in America

[burroughs85]

Belgium waffles are the ideal carrier for hot fudge and ice cream, not maple syrup. You should look into the feasibility of growing cocoa bushes in Mondaho for chocolate production. I hear a by product of the leaves are a real money maker, so you'd have a duel purpose crop and you could use a couple of boxcars for hauling the cash.

The people in Mondaho are French toast eaters, frozen waffle eaters and pancake eaters. Not Belgian waffle eaters. Mondaho is too far north of the tropical zone for cocoa. Should be plenty cold enough in the morning and warm enough during the March days for maple sap to run though.

 

[burroughs85]

Beckton Red Angus is having a sale today. I'm guessing they will do OK......

Cattle not lucrative? Then pray tell me who's getting fat on $15+/pound deli roast beef and $12+/pound T-bone and Porterhouse steaks? ?

 

[burroughs85]

I have these Normal Rockwell idyllic notions of American farming. Rolling green hills. Green pasture's. Fields of sweet clover. Green shade trees. Compacted clay and gravel surface lying down around barnyard areas. No muddy slop. Ask the Amish. Manure makes the best fertilizer. Ladybugs are great pest controllers.

 

[burroughs85]

 

[farmerjan]

Yep, idyllic.. but you sure aren't producing cattle in that sort of "confinement"..... and I said it might not be the "most lucrative".... as cattle are not always the "most lucrative"... I didn't say you can't make some money at it. We run cattle and we aren't getting rich but we are making some of the farm payments.
For most people a beef in the freezer is worth about 5.00 lb in costs..... so yeah, the prices they are getting are higher... but there is more in costs to store that beef, and then cook that beef and make the deli roast beef... Here, roast beef at the deli counter is around $10/ lb... I bought some 2 weeks ago to make sandwich making easier for me....It costs to make that roast beef... and then for it to sit in the store so that they can sell it... and to cover any that doesn't get sold and gets discarded so is "waste"..... If the prices are too much for you then buy a half and get it worked up the way you want, then do the cooking and curing or whatever all else you want done to it. I think that costs are high... but they are not paying their workers $8. an hour anymore due to inability to get good workers and due to federal regulations on minimum wage etc....
I would like the Currier and Ives life that is portrayed... at 3 in the morning in 20 degrees trying to pull a breech calf, it changes the PERSPECTIVE of farming from idyllic to REALITY...

 

[burroughs85]

Yep, idyllic.. but you sure aren't producing cattle in that sort of "confinement"..... and I said it might not be the "most lucrative".... as cattle are not always the "most lucrative"... I didn't say you can't make some money at it. We run cattle and we aren't getting rich but we are making some of the farm payments.
For most people a beef in the freezer is worth about 5.00 lb in costs..... so yeah, the prices they are getting are higher... but there is more in costs to store that beef, and then cook that beef and make the deli roast beef... Here, roast beef at the deli counter is around $10/ lb... I bought some 2 weeks ago to make sandwich making easier for me....It costs to make that roast beef... and then for it to sit in the store so that they can sell it... and to cover any that doesn't get sold and gets discarded so is "waste"..... If the prices are too much for you than buy a half and get it worked up the way you want, then do the cooking and curing or whatever all else you want done to it. I think that costs are high... but they are not paying their workers $8. an hour anymore due to inability to get good workers and due to federal regulations on minimum wage etc....
I would like the Currier and Ives life that is portrayed... at 3 in the morning in 20 degrees trying to pull a breech calf, it changes the PERSPECTIVE of farming from idyllic to REALITY...

On my fantasy train layout, the cows are brought to the feedlot from the ranch by cattle truck to be loaded into the stock cars. They are free-roaming bovines out at the fictitious Campbell XX Ranch. They are hamburger when the train hauls them to the slaughterhouse.

 

[hurleyjd]

From Maple syrup and cattle raising this subject has changed. I will change it more. My favorite syrup would be sorghum syrup. This who the syrup cooker is and what kind of cane they use.

 

[burroughs85]

Back to cows again from Acer trees just for kicks (cows do in fact KICK) ...... but since we're on the subject of maples, the cows' guns just might have a MAPLE stock. Stock, bad cow pun.



HE doesn't have a milk bag. This animation is UDDERLY stupid.

 

[burroughs85]

PS - Oh, you need Grade AA (organic maybe??) butter to go on that French toast with that homegrown maple syrup anyway and then again that's where the bovines come back in to play. Cows and maples, hard to separate in some ways. French toast also needs milk too, remember.

 

[Lucky_P]

Most all maples can be tapped. As can walnuts.
There was a trial done some years back... results published in the Northern Nut Growers Assn. yearly proceedings... Boxelder/Manitoba Maple syrup actually got better flavor ratings than sugar maple.
Necessary temperature/weather conditions may be a bigger stumbling block for folks trying to tap in more Southern locations than tree species.

I make hickory syrup, but I make mine from the nutshells left over after I crack and pick out my select shagbark & shellbark hickory nuts - cleaner than pulling off strips of bark... no lichens, poison ivy, bird poop to deal with. And, weather doesn't come into play.
I just boil nutshell fragments(there will be some pieces of kernel in there, too) - and, anymore, I just cook 'em all day on High in the crockpot, then strain the 'liquor' through an old t-shirt, add 1-1.5 cups sugar per cup of 'liquor', cook that down to desired thickness and bottle. If I want it a little darker, I'll throw in a few clean nut husks when I'm boiling the nutshells. I usually boil a few intact nuts when I'm cooking down the syrup, and put in one nut per jar.

Don't have any good shagbark or shellbarks? I didn't have any back home in AL.
You can make this with mockernut hickory nuts... I'd just crunch 'em with a pair of vise-grip pliers and toss 'em into the pot, kernel and all.

 

[BFE]

I'll have to give that method a try

 

[redcowsrule33]

I'll have to give that method a try

Our neighbor tapped our black walnuts this year. The flavor was outstanding. And I don't like the nuts themselves!