Blake Rowe, co-founder of Eco-Bags Products, Inc and determined Do It Yourself-er recently succeeded in making his own maple syrup! Here’s his story:

In keeping with our “how much can we do from home” project, I recently got two maple syrup tapsfrom my friend Harry, who also teaches at my school. We have a Norway Maple out back, and I had always assumed maple syrup only came from a Sugar Maple; not so!

I hung a couple of quart buckets and waited. Almost right away the sap began dripping in. I was late to start this year, but we got about a gallon over the course of the week. It boiled down to practically nothing, but it was from our backyard!

You have to be very careful to catch the cooking sap at the right moment; one minute it’s still basically water, then it’s delicious syrup. If you wait a moment too long it’s a blackened char in the pot that takes an hour to clean up. Sap boils down to syrup at a ratio of 40 to 1, by the way.

Enjoying that yogurt breakfast, made from scratch with locally delivered milk, homemade granola and our two tablespoons of our maple syrup was pretty funny. We had enough to give a spoonful away, too!

Have you made your own syrup? Any tips you can throw our way are appreciated!

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