00:02 - You are

00:04 - in. An.

00:22 - Event

00:23 - and. You.

00:31 - Good morning, and welcome to Patterson Farms.

00:33 - My name is Linda Neal, and I've worked here at Patterson for 28 years now.

00:38 - So I've seen a lot of changes.

00:40 - Before we start going into the sugar house, I'd like

00:43 - to give you a little idea of what the family is here.

00:46 - In the early 1920s.

00:49 - Grandma and grandpa Patterson.

00:51 - And that would be born.

00:52 - And Mabel Patterson started here on the farm.

00:55 - They had a little dairy of cattle.

00:57 - They tapped a few sugar bushes up on top of the hill

01:01 - and made a little bit of sirup.

01:03 - And how they made their sirup was they used wooden

01:05 - buckets and wooden spirals.

01:09 - They tap their trees with a hand

01:10 - auger, brought their sat down to their backyard with a horse drawn

01:15 - sleigh and the sap, and they boiled outside on a flat pan.

01:20 - When they passed the farm down to Clifton in Alberta, Patterson,

01:23 - they changed a little bit.

01:25 - They built a sugar house.

01:26 - They got a wood fired evaporator.

01:28 - I put in 2600 buckets that Richard and Robert and Mary Lee had to dump twice a day.

01:35 - When it

01:36 - passed down to Richard, that's when it really changed.

01:39 - We got into tubing and a lot more taps.

01:43 - We got up to 87,000 taps and 26 different sugar bushes.

01:49 - We got a new evaporator.

01:51 - We built a larger sugar house, got into an narrow,

01:55 - which helped us out an awful lot with as many taps as we have.

02:00 - And now we're down to our fifth generation.

02:02 - Terry and Terry Patterson.

02:04 - So we're changing every day.

02:08 - I've been very lucky to work with

02:10 - three out of the five generations

02:13 - in the history of Maple.

02:19 - Our seasons

02:20 - run anywhere from the end of January into April.

02:23 - We need freezing nights, warmed up days

02:26 - to about 41 degrees, and a westerly wind.

02:29 - And if you don't have that three combination, sap doesn't run very well.

02:34 - There's

02:34 - 143 different species of maple now in our area.

02:38 - Here we have red, silver, black swamp striped.

02:42 - But the best tree to make your sirup from is the American sugar maple.

02:46 - And that's what we basically tap here.

02:48 - Trees have to be 30 years old before we tap them.

02:51 - And about ten inches in diameter.

02:53 - We'll put one tap in the tree.

02:55 - As the trees grow larger and larger, we may put 2 or 3 taps in the tree.

03:00 - But here Patterson sets as far as we go.

03:03 - It doesn't hurt your trees to be tapped every single year.

03:07 - Mother nature knows when to turn the sap off.

03:09 - When it's ready for the leaves to come out.

03:12 - And if you look at this crosscut here

03:14 - of a sugar maple tree, you can see the old tap holes.

03:18 - This shows you that it does not hurt your trees to be tapped every year,

03:21 - putting a new hole in the tree.

03:23 - It just grows right on over.

03:26 - This tree was

03:27 - 143 years old when it had to come down after a storm, and it was giving sap

03:33 - at about 30 years, and it was still giving sap

03:37 - when it was cut down.

03:41 - When sap comes from the sugar maple tree, it's

03:43 - clear, like water, about 2% sugar, and a 2% sugar.

03:47 - It takes 43.7 gallons of sap

03:51 - to make one gallon sirup.

03:54 - So we need a lot of sap to make a lot of sirup.

03:57 - Now, you say with so many different kinds of maple trees,

04:00 - how do you tell a sugar maple?

04:02 - Well, the way I do it, because it's the easiest way.

04:05 - I look at the leaves and on a sugar maple leaf it has five points to it.

04:10 - No other maple tree does.

04:12 - When there's no leaves on the trees,

04:14 - you can look at the twigs and on a sugar maple twig.

04:18 - It grows in five shapes.

04:19 - No other maple tree does.

04:22 - Now, when our guys get really good at it,

04:24 - all they have to do is look at the outside bark.

04:26 - It has a very distinctive look and feel to it.

04:32 - Now, the first people who made maple sirup were the Indians.

04:36 - And how they did it was they took a tomahawk or hatchet,

04:39 - and they would put a great big slice in the tree,

04:43 - put a piece of bark under that slice,

04:46 - and the sap would run down and into their birch buckets,

04:48 - but they pitched on the inside to carry their sap back

04:52 - to either their teepees or their sugar camps out in the woods.

04:56 - And how they boiled.

05:00 - Is they had a hollowed out log,

05:03 - and they would put their sap in the hollowed out log

05:06 - rocks up, drop the rocks into the sap.

05:09 - And that's how they made their sugar.

05:15 - And they kept it in sugar blocks just like this.

05:19 - This is how they kept their sirup.

05:21 - Now, if they wanted sirup, they would just scratch a little off,

05:24 - add water back to it, and it would become sirup again.

05:30 - Now to tell whether it's sugaring season.

05:32 - We normally look at a calendar

05:35 - and we know that bout the end of January it's time to get ready.

05:38 - Start tapping your trees and getting ready for the next sugaring season.

05:42 - The Indians didn't have that.

05:44 - And how they could tell that it was sugaring season is by the moon phases.

05:49 - Now in a year, there's always 13 full moons, and

05:53 - it was the third full moon in the season that they knew was a sugar moon.

05:57 - And that's when they usually started making their maple sirup.

06:02 - Third full moon

06:02 - in this year was around the 22nd of March,

06:06 - and that's when they would have started to make their sirup.

06:11 - How they got their calendar is by looking at the turtle.

06:15 - And on the turtle shell.

06:17 - There's always 13 cylinders on the top of the shell.

06:19 - That was said, 13 full moons and the little cylinders

06:24 - on the outside of the turtle shell was 20 is always 28.

06:28 - And that was the 28 days in between each full moon.

06:33 - Now, when the Indians taught the colonists

06:35 - to do it, that's where it changed a little bit.

06:39 - They used a hand auger where the hole in the tree

06:42 - started from.

06:46 - And wooden styles.

06:48 - Now they made these wooden spirals out of sumac or elderberry bushes.

06:51 - Because they have a pit.

06:52 - The inside they would drill the inside out, whittle down one end.

06:57 - That end would go into the tree, and the sap would flow down

07:01 - and into their wooden buckets.

07:04 - They would

07:05 - boil their sap in big black iron kettles,

07:08 - and as they got thicker and thicker, they would go from one kettle to another.

07:12 - And at the end they made sugar blocks just like the Indians did,

07:17 - and kept them in little muslin bags,

07:21 - kept them in the root cellar or their attics where it was cool.

07:24 - And if anybody's ever or read the little House on the Prairie

07:27 - books, Laura's

07:28 - mother asked her to go to the root cellar and bring up a brick of sugar.

07:32 - And this is what they were talking about, which maple sugar?

07:39 - Richard's grandson

07:41 - also used the wooden buckets and the wooden spirals.

07:46 - They had snowshoes that they used to go out in the woods

07:49 - to do their tapping.

07:53 - And their lanterns to bring down.

07:57 - Over on this wall,

07:58 - we have one of the older, sap haulers, which was drawn by a horse.

08:04 - And they would.

08:04 - There's little lamb or springs on the top, and they would pour

08:09 - their sap in that would keep the twigs and the leaves out of it,

08:12 - and the horse would bring it down, and they would boil from that.

08:17 - When Richard's folks took over,

08:20 - they went to the metal buckets and the metal spikes.

08:24 - These files were made out of tin and cast iron,

08:28 - and you can see how big these and the wooden spirals are.

08:32 - So it took a pretty big hole in the tree,

08:36 - took the tree about two years

08:38 - to heal over or belly button over what we call it.

08:43 - We also had very heavy tappers that we would have to carry out,

08:48 - plus a jug of gas and do our tapping with those.

08:54 - Now when people

08:56 - think of maple sirup, they often think of Vermont.

09:00 - Well, I'm here to tell you, Vermont's not the only state that makes maple sirup.

09:06 - If you look at my map up here,

09:07 - I have all the states that

09:09 - make maple sirup, and they make enough to be in the United States.

09:12 - That looks they go as far north as,

09:15 - Minnesota and Iowa and as far south as Tennessee.

09:19 - Now all the states use different maple trees.

09:22 - All maple trees give sap.

09:24 - They all make sirup.

09:25 - But it is going to taste a little different.

09:28 - So each state that you visit

09:30 - and you try their maple sirup, it will taste a little different.

09:34 - Different soil, different growing season and dress and trees.

09:38 - Do the different grades or their different taste of sirup.

09:43 - We are now using our, lighter battery operated tappers.

09:48 - We also have tubing instead of buckets, and you might have seen

09:53 - some of this tubing as you came up Kearney Road this morning.

09:57 - Now the light blue tubing, we string tree to tree. It

10:01 - then runs into a larger line which we call our main lines.

10:05 - The main lines then run into big catch tanks that we have at every sugarbush.

10:09 - Now what is Sugarbush is just a group of maple trees in different areas.

10:14 - Some of them are large bushes.

10:16 - Some of them are very small.

10:19 - It depends on

10:19 - how many trees are in that area.

10:22 - The big main lines then run into big catch tanks, and that's

10:26 - where we pick up our sap with our trucks, and they go around and pick it up.

10:31 - We also use a different kind of spile.

10:33 - This is called a health tree. Spile.

10:35 - It's only 5/16.

10:37 - It gives us just as much sap as the larger taps do, and it only takes our trees

10:43 - about six months to heal over instead of two years.

10:47 - So each generation learned a little bit better how to take care of their trees

10:51 - from their Indians, putting great big slices in the tree and leaving scars

10:56 - down to the new health tree styles that we use today.

11:00 - Now, tubing is a new concept.

11:04 - In the early 1800s.

11:07 - Canada made metal tubing and spirals and which they hooked together.

11:13 - They had miles and miles of this and they would put it all together,

11:17 - tap their trees.

11:18 - But it didn't work very well,

11:20 - because once the sap started to flow into the metal tubing

11:24 - and it froze at night like it was supposed to, it popped apart

11:28 - the metal with the plastic tubing that we use.

11:31 - It contracts and goes back to its original size.

11:37 - These are some of the antiques that we've gathered around our area.

11:41 - This is an old sugar log.

11:43 - Now, what our families did around this area,

11:46 - we were about the last ones that had TV and telephone.

11:50 - And so we would gather our friends and family,

11:54 - relatives at somebody's house on a Friday night.

11:57 - They'd get a gallon of sirup out, boil it down,

12:00 - throw it in a sugar log and start to stir.

12:03 - And they would get out some popcorn, pop it,

12:06 - get out their grape juice that they had canned the year before.

12:09 - And as they stirred that hot sirup, it

12:12 - got thicker and thicker and granulated into sugar.

12:15 - And they would dip their popcorn in it, drink their grape juice,

12:18 - do a little gossiping, and just have wonderful fellowship.

12:23 - They also put their sirup

12:25 - when they made their sirup into these tins.

12:29 - They had little tags on it

12:31 - that had their name and their address.

12:34 - They would take it down to either the,

12:36 - general store here in Burnsville, and they would barter their sirup off

12:41 - for either their next year's seeds for their crops and shoes for the kids.

12:46 - We also had a train depot, and they would take their sirup down

12:50 - in their tins, gather everybody sirup up, put it on the train depot.

12:54 - And it was taken to New York City to be sold.

12:58 - This is an old set tin that we had that we found.

13:01 - And what this is, is an old oil tin.

13:04 - After the war, when it came back, they didn't have any use for it.

13:07 - So what they did was clean them out, put a little hole in the back of it,

13:11 - put a tap through, and they hung them on their trees.

13:14 - And this is what they gathered their sap in.

13:18 - What if now, what I've

13:20 - told you about is that we need freezing nights,

13:24 - warmed up days to about 41 degrees,

13:26 - and a westerly wind sap is clear,

13:29 - like water, about 2% sugar,

13:32 - and it takes 43 gallons of sap to make one gallon of sirup.

13:36 - I think what we'll do now is we'll go out and we'll tapestry.

13:41 - All right.

13:41 - We're going to take you out now,

13:43 - and we're going to tap a tree for you the way we used to do it.

13:47 - Jerry's going to take a drill bit 5/16.

13:51 - We're going to drill a hole in the tree, put our tap

13:54 - in when.

13:59 - As we drill that hole where it's going to be in an angle

14:02 - so that the sap can flow down.

14:10 - Here you go there.

14:11 - And the sap is starting to flow already.

14:20 - Now we're using wood now because we don't want to hit it too hard.

14:23 - We just want to get it enough in the tree where it's tight

14:27 - and not dripping on the outside.

14:35 - There we go.

14:37 - And you can see that it's dripping right

14:39 - out of the little spout.

14:43 - It's really dripping today.

14:48 - The bucket will hang.

14:56 - And you can hear it dripping in the bucket.

15:00 - Next we'll put a little tip top on it

15:03 - so that keeps the twigs and the leaves hopefully out of it.

15:07 - Rainwater.

15:15 - Now, hopefully

15:15 - I'll be dumping this bucket this afternoon.

15:19 - Not a whole lot, but at least I can say I can dump it.

15:22 - I dumped the bucket today.

15:39 - All right,

15:39 - now we've showed you how to tap a tree with a bucket.

15:43 - This is how we do it today.

15:45 - We have all of our saplings all up now.

15:48 - We keep our lines up all year long.

15:50 - And this is one of our largest sugar bushes.

15:53 - We have about 12,000 caps now a year.

15:56 - All the main lines are running down the creek area

16:00 - down to the bottom where our tank is.

16:03 - All of the trees here are tapped and run down into our big main lines.

16:09 - Right here you can see some of the old cap poles

16:12 - that are starting to close up. Now.

16:17 - And some of our older trees

16:18 - now, Terry Patterson now is going to give you

16:21 - a little bit more idea on how these lines do really work.

16:26 - Morning or.

16:30 - When we drill that hole in the tree,

16:32 - it comes out of that tree one drop at a time, same as you saw on it.

16:35 - And that bucket that will run down these tubes.

16:38 - And each tree collectively runs into the main line

16:41 - as they get larger and run to the, to the tank,

16:44 - our main lines are suspended on high tensile wire.

16:48 - So they're graded so that they drain.

16:50 - Nothing sets in that line.

16:51 - And at the end of the season,

16:54 - the taps are all pulled, and then they come back around

16:57 - and are plugged off so that the system seal and, nothing gets into that.

17:01 - And then the hole on the tree, the top hole will heal up

17:06 - and, keeps setting.

17:07 - They can get into that.

17:11 - The 14 guys

17:13 - that we have come in and do our tapping every year for us,

17:16 - we now have 70,000 taps instead of the 86.

17:20 - It takes them about two and a half weeks to get everything tapped

17:23 - and repaired and ready to go.

17:26 - So they do start in January, and then by February 1st

17:30 - or so, we're ready to go.

17:34 - All right.

17:34 - Now, we had a freeze last night, and we've got some sunshine coming out,

17:38 - so today should be a good sap day for us.

17:41 - And, it's probably about 11:00 right now.

17:44 - And the sun's been out for a while and it is starting to thaw.

17:49 - And you can see some of the air bubbles in this light blue line.

17:52 - I as it starts to thaw, it's going to start running down the channel

17:57 - from each tree.

18:00 - The small line it keeps running.

18:03 - Going around another tree here down to the bottom of this.

18:08 - Ravine and into our larger lines.

18:12 - And this is going to get faster and faster.

18:15 - And as it warms up, it's really going to start running.

18:19 - Once it gets down to the main lines, then it's

18:21 - going to be carried down to our SAP house.

18:24 - It's at the bottom where our tank set.

18:35 - All right.

18:35 - Now our our trees are intact.

18:39 - The sap is coming down.

18:40 - It's coming down through those big main lines.

18:43 - Now, the three light blue lines are what the sap comes down through.

18:47 - The black line is our air line.

18:50 - Now we need that for a vacuum system.

18:53 - It's an enclosed system so everything is air tight.

18:57 - When the pumps are turned on, the sap is brought down

19:01 - through those larger main lines

19:05 - and into our

19:06 - SAP house, where it comes into a release.

19:09 - The first

19:11 - and then pumped into our tanks.

19:13 - That holds the sap for us.

19:16 - These two, tanks are 4000 gallons.

19:19 - That'll help us out.

19:21 - And when they get full, well, he knows, to come over

19:25 - and pick it up with one of our tankers.

19:29 - Now, the vacuum is just to keep our air's.

19:33 - Our lines free is sap.

19:35 - It does not, suck the sap out of the trees.

19:40 - It just keeps our lines clean so it doesn't freeze at night time.

19:45 - You are going to have that certain freeze.

19:47 - And some of it.

19:48 - That's why you need a little sun in the morning, get everything thawed up

19:52 - and ready to go and start to run.

20:02 - Now what he is doing right now, he's hooking up our tank.

20:07 - More going

20:07 - to be taking the sap out of the tanks and loading it into our tanker

20:12 - truck here to take back to the sugar house.

20:22 - We're also going to take a sample of the sap

20:25 - to see what the sugar content is.

21:02 - Yeah.

21:02 - Oh, is that my sample?

21:04 - Okay. The.

21:12 - We like to keep a track on how much sugar content

21:16 - is in our sap when it comes from each one of our sugar bushes.

21:20 - So the boys, when they come in, pick up our sap at the tanks.

21:23 - We'll take a sample for me and try it out and see what

21:27 - the sugar content is.

21:40 - No more.

21:41 - Thank you.

21:56 - Okay.

21:56 - This sugarbush is running 1.8

22:00 - sugar content, which is pretty good for this time of the season.

22:06 - And? So we're going to write it down on our clipboard.

22:15 - And what we're putting on our clipboard today is how much sap

22:18 - comes from the sugarbush, how much we're loading up on our tanker.

22:22 - And also we're going to write down what the sugar content is today.

22:25 - Once you vacuum.

22:27 - Yep.

22:28 - Also we take a vacuum reading.

22:32 - And that way

22:33 - it can tell me if the vacuum is down, then I know there's a problem here

22:37 - at the Sugarbush, and we can send one of our crews over to look,

22:41 - find out what what the problem is.

22:45 - There's 27in a vacuum, so that tells me that things are working

22:49 - pretty well here.

22:56 - All right.

22:57 - Now our guys have come back with the trucks,

23:00 - and they're going to take it up to a dump station that we have by the barn.

23:03 - They're going to dump their load down and it's gravity said down here

23:07 - to these four tanks, which holds our sap.

23:10 - When it comes down through the tubing, it'll go through

23:13 - some sap socks that we have, and it takes out all the little grubs.

23:18 - It's gotten into the sap before it gets here.

23:21 - Now, once we get these tanks full of sap.

23:24 - And this is raw sap straight from the tree,

23:28 - it is then going to be pumped down to the next,

23:31 - room which holds our reverse osmosis machine.

23:35 - And that's where we're going to go next.

23:37 - But these two tanks that are here,

23:40 - this holds the extra water

23:42 - that we have taken out of the sap before we start to boil.

23:47 - So we wanted to show you this before we went down to the row room.

23:51 - You see, this water is crystal clear and this is

23:56 - sap tree water.

23:59 - Now there is no sugar content.

24:01 - This is an inert water.

24:03 - There's nothing in it whatsoever.

24:06 - And we keep this

24:08 - and use it to clean our machines with, since there isn't anything in it,

24:13 - it is quite safe, and we can take it and rinse our evaporator

24:18 - and clean it and get it ready for the next day.

24:21 - We also wash our reverse osmosis with this, clean water too.

24:27 - So everything that we get from the tree through the sap is used for something.

24:31 - Nothing's ever wasted.

24:33 - Once we get finished with this, tree water

24:36 - that we have, our drains all go back out into our fields.

24:41 - So we do recycle, recycle the tree water back into nature again.

24:50 - Okay, now we're ready for the next step.

24:53 - Once we have enough sap up in our tanks, it's gravity fed.

24:57 - Back down here to this first room that holds a reverse osmosis machine.

25:03 - Now, what this machine does, it's taking some of the water

25:06 - out of the raw sap before we even start to boil.

25:10 - And it makes it concentrate.

25:12 - The fresh water that we take out of the sap is pumped back

25:15 - up to those first two tanks that we saw, where we'll hold it,

25:19 - and we use that to clean our machines and our our Ro,

25:23 - because it is an inert water, there is nothing in it.

25:26 - No salts, no sugars, no nothing.

25:28 - So it's safe to use for cleaning on our stainless steel machines.

25:34 - Once the sap goes through the

25:35 - O and it becomes to concentrate,

25:38 - it's pumped upstairs to a cold room that we have

25:41 - two 1350 gallon tanks that holds our concentrate.

25:46 - I need 1500 gallons of concentrate just to start the evaporator.

25:51 - Now, how this works is that when the sap comes back down,

25:55 - it goes through what we call membranes at high pressure.

25:59 - And that's what separates the waters and the sugars.

26:03 - And then they are pumped out into different pipes.

26:06 - Now we were up in the woods earlier and we were talking about

26:10 - how much, tubing and the taps and things.

26:14 - Since we don't have the help like we used to,

26:17 - we got a monitoring system that monitors our woods.

26:23 - Right here

26:23 - is one of our sensors that we have in the woods.

26:27 - And what that can tell us is if our pumps are running,

26:30 - if the vacuum is good, and if it isn't, then I know

26:34 - that I can send a few guys out there to find a problem.

26:38 - And instead of looking all over the woods,

26:41 - it measures it down to a specific part of the woods

26:46 - so that they can go straight there instead of wandering

26:49 - around looking for a problem.

26:52 - We also have tape sensors.

26:55 - The tank sensors are in every tank at every sugarbush.

26:59 - Now, this can tell us how much sap is in the tank.

27:03 - So when I send my guys out in the tankers to pick up SAP,

27:07 - I can send them to a tank that's full and not one that's empty.

27:12 - And we have a monitoring system on one of the computers that will show you that.

27:16 - And we'll see that a little later.

27:19 - And it's kind of neat

27:19 - watching it, you know, going from where when I started,

27:23 - then we had to check every tank every morning, turn on the pumps.

27:28 - We have to make sure that they're not frozen and unfreeze.

27:31 - And and here now all I have to do is look at computer.

27:34 - It's just awesome.

27:38 - Now all we have to do is look at that.

27:40 - We can turn it on. We can turn it off.

27:43 - The new system that we have, this is a new our road system

27:47 - that we just got this last year, brand new first season coming in.

27:52 - And it took the place of two our roads that we had sitting in this room.

27:57 - Now it does the same thing.

27:58 - It does 7000 gallons of sap for our

28:02 - and it can concentrate down to 20 to 24%.

28:06 - But this one

28:07 - can be monitored and started and run by your telephone.

28:13 - And this really helps, our main guy out here, Todd.

28:16 - Finally, he kind of runs this portion of the sugarhouse.

28:20 - He does the boiling, he runs the row, he makes sure

28:23 - everything is working the way it's supposed to.

28:27 - And if he's out on a problem that he can't get away from,

28:30 - and I have sap up in my tanks, it's got to be start.

28:34 - He can start it from wherever he is by his phone.

28:37 - It'll start that row and start growing the sap and getting it ready.

28:42 - So by the time that he gets back here to the sugar out, he can start to boil.

28:46 - So it really has helped us out an awful lot.

28:50 - We're down to a skeleton crew right now and all these little

28:54 - things, these little high tech things really do help us out.

28:57 - For as big as the sugar House, we are.

29:04 - All right.

29:05 - Now that we have enough concentrate, we're ready to start the evaporator.

29:09 - Now. I also told you that we use our our Ro water to clean our machines.

29:14 - We can always use the distilled water

29:18 - that comes off our evaporator to clean our barrels.

29:22 - We'll rinse them out and then they get ready

29:25 - so we can put more sirup in our barrels.

29:29 - Now, once the concentrates ready, it's pumped from upstairs

29:33 - down to the back top of the evaporator,

29:36 - where it runs through stainless steel tubing and it's preheated.

29:40 - It then drops to the back pan where it starts to boil.

29:44 - Now it starts to boil.

29:46 - It's going to start changing it gets heavier because you're boiling more

29:50 - water away from the sugar, and it starts to change in color from clear.

29:56 - That comes from the tree to a nice medium

29:58 - amber that we hope is going to come out at our finishing pans.

30:02 - Now, as the sap starts to get heavier, it's pushed toward

30:06 - the front of the evaporator.

30:09 - Now, as it gets down here to our finishing

30:11 - pans, sirup is just about ready to come off.

30:16 - Now when it becomes sirup, it's at 67%

30:21 - and that's when it becomes sirup.

30:24 - Now we also do that by temperature.

30:26 - Sirup comes off at about 218 degrees,

30:30 - or seven and a half degrees above the boiling point of water.

30:34 - Water boils here at the farm about 210 degrees.

30:38 - But we will check that because if your weather changes

30:41 - during the day, so will the temperature of your sirup.

30:44 - You're going to draw it off. There.

30:47 - Now, when Richard's grand

30:49 - folks boiled outside on a flat pan

30:52 - to see if there sirup was ready, they would use a scoop.

30:56 - They would scoop it down into the sirup and hold it up.

30:59 - If it's sheeted or curtain, or slid off like a piece of ice.

31:03 - They knew this girl was ready, and they draw it up,

31:06 - take it into their house, and can end up in mason jars.

31:11 - When Richard's folks used

31:13 - a wood fired evaporator, they changed a little bit.

31:17 - Used?

31:18 - They used a hydrometer.

31:20 - Now what this does, it checks the density of your sirup.

31:24 - Sirup has to be heavy enough so it doesn't vinegar on you.

31:28 - And you have to remember too, that if sirup is boiled

31:31 - correctly down to 67% sugar, it's never going to go bad on you.

31:37 - If you get a little piece of mold on the top, which we call mother,

31:41 - just take it off.

31:42 - It's a natural sealer.

31:45 - Put it back in your refrigerator.

31:47 - If it gets a taste or a smell to the sirup, take it out of that

31:51 - container, bring it to a boil and put it back into a clean container.

31:55 - It goes right back to sirup.

31:58 - Now, my mom

32:00 - had inherited a farm next door to ours, and I have three brothers,

32:05 - and she sent us kids down to the ladies root cellar to clean it up.

32:09 - Well, we went down there and found six green

32:12 - pop bottles that she had corked and paraffin.

32:15 - And being kids, we thought this old lady's been making some elderberry wine,

32:20 - and we're gonna pop one of these babies, open it, and drink it.

32:23 - Well, lo and behold, it wasn't the elderberry wine us kids

32:26 - thought it was going to be.

32:28 - It was maple sirup.

32:29 - The only thing that was wrong with it,

32:32 - it was smelled a little musty from being in a root cellar.

32:36 - And other than that, it was fine.

32:38 - And we know that maple sirup was over 75 years old.

32:42 - So if it is boiled correctly and put in a nice container,

32:46 - kept where it's cool and dark, natural will stay.

32:49 - Good for you for forever.

32:51 - Now we have four bottles left.

32:53 - My brothers and I are going to get together in about seven years

32:57 - and open another one, and next year is going to be over 100 years old.

33:03 - We now have an

33:04 - automatic draw off that helps us out on our evaporator.

33:08 - Once that temperature is

33:10 - hit down here in our finishing hands, it's going to be automatically drawn off

33:15 - for us and into this tank.

33:20 - When it goes into this tank,

33:22 - we're going to add diatomaceous earth to the sirup.

33:26 - Now why we do that is we want to take

33:29 - the sugar sand or niter out of the sirup.

33:33 - That's that brown grit that you used to find

33:36 - in your old tins and jugs of maple sirup.

33:39 - It's something that the tree produces naturally.

33:42 - It doesn't hurt you to eat or drink it, but because we put a lot of our sirup

33:47 - in glass vials, we wanted to be crystal clear.

33:53 - This is the only way that you can take that sugar sand out of the sirup

33:57 - is by putting the diatomaceous earth in and running it through a filter.

34:02 - Press.

34:05 - Now this is sirup that we have gotten before.

34:08 - It goes through the filter press.

34:10 - And you can see it's kind of hazy.

34:15 - Now once the sirup goes through this filter, press,

34:19 - it's then pumped in to our barrel.

34:22 - Now when that sugar is pumped in this barrel, it's still very, very hot.

34:27 - And once Nick put the top on it or the bung

34:30 - and it cools down, it acts just like a canning jar

34:33 - and it'll keep that sirup good for a long, long time.

34:38 - We keep ours in the barrels, and then when we're ready

34:40 - to candy in smaller containers or make a product with it, we know

34:46 - what's going on.

34:48 - Every barrel is numbered,

34:50 - dated, and graded on a sticker.

34:53 - So this tells us, when we made it,

34:56 - what grade it is, and how it taste.

35:01 - So that when

35:01 - I'm making a product, I can go and pick out each one.

35:04 - I want.

35:06 - In the beginning of your season,

35:08 - you normally get a very light, fancy sirup

35:11 - that doesn't have much of the maple flavored, but it's very sweet.

35:15 - We keep that, don't chuck it up, and we use it to make candy

35:19 - and maple cream with.

35:21 - As the seasons progressed, it gets darker

35:23 - and darker and more maple flavored.

35:27 - Your next grade is going to be a medium

35:29 - or what they call rich. Now

35:33 - and a little darker later in the season.

35:35 - It's going to be called a dark or robust.

35:38 - As you're getting to the end of the season,

35:41 - you have a very dark, very strong sirup.

35:44 - It still has a very good taste,

35:46 - and we'll

35:47 - barrel all of those off and keep them to make our products.

35:50 - And you can, at the end of the season, as long as we can keep

35:54 - that sap boiling in the pan and not get all wild and boiled over,

35:59 - we'll make what they call commercial grade sirup.

36:02 - Now that stuff is nasty.

36:04 - It's black, stringy, and it stinks when they're boiling in an air bubble.

36:09 - Barrel that up, ship it out on the market.

36:12 - They use it for sweetening tobacco, making maple ice cream and extracts.

36:17 - So everything that we get from the maple sap is used for something.

36:21 - Nothing's ever wasted.

36:25 - Once our barrels are numbered and graded and ready to go,

36:29 - we'll take them over to the other building where they are

36:32 - kept during the year, and we can go over and pick whichever one we want out.

36:48 - Each barrel gets a sample

36:50 - that we're going to, grade a little later

36:54 - and see what the, grade or the color is.

37:05 - You can see the difference.

37:06 - This is sirup that is just taken right off the evaporator and how cloudy it is.

37:12 - And this is sirup that has gone through the press.

37:15 - Everything is taken out.

37:17 - All the little grubs, the diatomaceous earth, everything.

37:20 - And it's crystal clear.

37:53 - Okay.

37:54 - This barrel has been filled and the tops are been putting on.

37:58 - And now we're going to weigh it. We made it.

38:01 - Weigh it, and then we're going to take it in and grade the color on it.

38:06 - Now, we already have the tare weight on, this scale

38:11 - so that they can leave it right on the little buggy there.

38:14 - It's going to be 669 pounds.

38:21 - And the tare weight on the barrel

38:24 - is 59.

38:51 - So it's going to be a net

38:52 - weight of 610 pounds.

39:05 - We also have our name, address,

39:08 - and our FDA number and PTA number on these.

39:11 - So if we sell it out on the bulk market, they know where this sirup is

39:15 - coming from.

39:24 - Now we've also made a sample of this drum.

39:28 - So when I go to need one

39:31 - for canning or a product, I can get this number.

39:35 - And this sample

39:37 - and it will match.

39:48 - Now we do a lot of stats here, where

39:51 - we're writing down everything that we get from all the sap from our sugar bushes.

39:56 - How much, how many gallons comes from every sugar bush,

40:01 - sugar content.

40:03 - Then when it gets in here and we're making it into sirup,

40:06 - then we're keeping tabs on how much sirup we make for the day,

40:09 - what the grade is, so that we have stats on everything

40:14 - and every step that we make here at the sugar House.

40:20 - All right.

40:21 - I told you that when we get ready to dump with the barrels,

40:23 - we're going to grade the sirup that's in it.

40:26 - And how we do that is, well, when Richard was doing it a few years ago,

40:30 - we had a little color code kit that we used, and we would take

40:34 - a sample of the barrel and put it in with the rest of these.

40:38 - And we were supposed to match them up and that would get give our color code

40:42 - whether it is a light, a medium, a dark or a B,

40:46 - and that was the old flavors that they used to have.

40:50 - But not everybody's eyes are the same.

40:52 - And we used to have some really colorful discussions in here.

40:56 - On whether it was going to be a medium or a dark.

40:59 - Now we have another machine that helps us out with this,

41:04 - and it's called a light transmittance machine.

41:07 - Now what this is going to do is we take a sample of the sirup,

41:10 - put it in a little vial, and it goes into this machine

41:13 - and it shoots a light through it, and it gives us a number back.

41:17 - And what that number is, is exact of what grade it's going to be,

41:21 - whether it is a delicate, a rich, robust or very dark, very strong.

41:28 - And so there's no question about what you're buying in your jugs.

41:32 - So what we're going to do is we're going to calibrate

41:35 - the machine first, and we use a vial of glycerin.

41:45 - And while that's calibrating we're also going to check

41:49 - the density of the sirup to make sure that it is heavy enough.

41:53 - And we're going to do that with distilled water.

42:07 - Okay.

42:08 - This one is ready.

42:10 - So we're going to check

42:12 - and grade our sirup that you just saw

42:15 - going into the barrel.

42:30 - We're going to read it.

42:40 - Okay.

42:41 - That reading is 57.3.

42:45 - And I'm going to match it up

42:49 - with the colors.

42:50 - And if 57.3 is going

42:53 - to make it into the rich gray, which used to be our medium

42:58 - and it gave us, I can do a rich color is anywhere

43:01 - from 50.0 to 74.9.

43:05 - So I know that's going to be the grade of rich.

43:11 - Now we're going to check the density of the sirup to make sure it's heavy enough

43:16 - for a little in here.

43:20 - Now, the way we did this

43:22 - machine is we use distilled water and set it back to zero.

43:27 - So we're going to read this one.

43:30 - Now. We want it to be about 66.7.

43:35 - This one came at 66.3.

43:41 - It's going to be barrel number 284.

43:44 - So all of these stats this will tell me how much sugar I have

43:47 - in every grade and how many total gallons I have when we get finished here.

43:53 - Now, after we.

43:56 - Get the density,

43:59 - we're going to use our Ro water

44:01 - that we use to clean our other machines, and we're going to clean this.

44:04 - So each time we use it, it is going to be clean.

44:09 - There's not going to be any sugar content on it, anything else on it.

44:12 - So that we get a true reading.

44:19 - Everything is noted.

44:20 - And then each year I can go back

44:22 - and see what we did the year before that or the year before that.

44:27 - I've been keeping records now for about 20 years,

44:30 - so we can go back and tell you on any certain year how much sap we got,

44:34 - if we had a good season and how much sirup that we made.

44:38 - Last year, we had a pretty good season.

44:40 - We made 19,000 gallons of sirup year before that we made 22,000 gallons.

44:47 - So hopefully this year Mother Nature will be pretty good to us.

44:50 - Some will make some good sirup this year too.

44:52 - So far it looks pretty good.

44:54 - This is some of the sirup that we made yesterday that has to be graded

45:00 - and put it on the barrel.

45:14 - All right.

45:15 - Now we're going to our products that we can make with maple sirup.

45:19 - Because sirup is not just for breakfast anymore.

45:22 - When we first take our sirup out, we're starting out

45:25 - making our three basic products from sirup.

45:29 - And all this is, is taking sirup, boiling a little bit more water away

45:35 - from the sirup and stirring it fast or slow or cooling it fast or slow.

45:41 - And those three combinations makes our three basic products.

45:45 - The first thing that we can make is maple cream.

45:48 - And what that is, is we're taking maple sirup.

45:51 - We're boiling it down a little bit further, we cool it very fast,

45:55 - and then we whip it and all it is is a thick

45:58 - spread of maple sirup,

46:02 - and it has a creamy,

46:04 - texture and is very light.

46:07 - You can use it on, fruit on

46:12 - biscuits, your pancakes,

46:14 - or like me, I eat it right out of the jar with the spoon.

46:17 - The next item you can make by taking sirup, boiling it

46:21 - a little bit further than cream, and you have maple candy.

46:26 - And we'll take that.

46:27 - Boil that down, let it cool.

46:30 - Slowly.

46:31 - We put it in, our candy machine

46:34 - with an auger, and it slowly turns.

46:37 - And then we can put it in to some of our molds that we have these

46:41 - we made into little maple leafs.

46:49 - Maple sirup has very high energy with it.

46:52 - And,

46:54 - it's an energy boost that you can take, when you're kind of low in the afternoon.

46:59 - If you just pop one of these babies in your mouth,

47:01 - you'll get that little burst of energy that you need to get rid of.

47:04 - Get going for the rest of the afternoon.

47:08 - Now, if you take that sirup

47:09 - and boil it down just even a little bit further than your candy,

47:12 - you're going to get what we call maple granulated sugar.

47:17 - And how do we boil this down?

47:18 - We boil it as far, almost as far as it will go.

47:22 - We then put it in this machine

47:25 - and it starts to slow, and we put it in very, very hot.

47:28 - And as it starts to stir, it's stirring slowly.

47:32 - And as that hot sirup cools, it's

47:35 - going to get thicker and thicker, almost like peanut butter.

47:38 - And then it just granulated right into sugar.

47:41 - We're going to take that and then we're going to sift it

47:44 - will sift it with a large sifter which is this machine right here.

47:49 - And it takes out the big clumps.

47:51 - And then we're going to take our smaller sifter,

47:54 - and we sift it again to get that nice, fine granulated sugar.

48:00 - What we have left over is

48:02 - another product which we call maple Crunchies.

48:06 - Now, what that is, is this is what's left over after we sift it.

48:10 - It's bigger crunch.

48:11 - It's bigger pieces of sugar. It's very hard.

48:14 - So you can use that, for making cookies,

48:19 - muffins, putting on top of ice cream.

48:23 - Now, the maple sugar you can use,

48:25 - just like you use white or brown sugar, and you only use half as much.

48:30 - Diabetics can use it because it has a very low glycemic index.

48:35 - They still have to watch it because it is a natural sugar, but

48:39 - it tends to make the readings slowly rise instead of spiking like white sugar does.

48:45 - Now, if we take that sirup and boil it just a little bit further,

48:49 - then we're going to get those sugar blocks that we talked about that

48:52 - the Indians use to make hikers and campers can use this.

48:56 - It's very compact, but yet it gives you your sirup

48:59 - if you want it, just add a little bit of, water to it.

49:03 - Or you can use it like sugar or candy.

49:05 - Smash it with a hammer.

49:10 - But then you can take those three basic products,

49:12 - and you can go out and make what we call extra value products.

49:17 - This is just about anything, sugar can be used

49:21 - instead of white or brown sugar sirup can be used instead of sugars.

49:26 - And you can make extra value products

49:29 - like our barbecue sauce,

49:32 - maple salad dressing,

49:35 - maple dipping mustard.

49:36 - We cover nuts, we cover popcorn.

49:40 - We have even rock candy that we make that the kids love.

49:44 - And best of all, we make maple cotton candy.

49:48 - Now that one does have a little bit of extra white sugar in it.

49:51 - That's just to keep our machine from coming up.

49:53 - But boy is that that's the favorite of everybody.

49:56 - Whether you're five years old or 85 years old, everybody has to

50:00 - have the maple cotton candy.

50:03 - This is one of our stoves that we use now.

50:05 - This is where we do all of our, granulated

50:08 - sugar is in this kitchen alone gets kind of messy.

50:11 - So this is why we do it in a small space.

50:14 - And we'll fill all these big pots up with our sirup and get them all going

50:19 - and be taking one right after the other.

50:22 - You don't have to wait in between each batch.

50:25 - You could just as many pots as you have boiling.

50:27 - You can make your sugar with.

50:31 - Now, with all of the canning that we do in,

50:34 - like our plastic jugs, we have the little tins.

50:38 - We do it in glass.

50:40 - When they do our large orders in plastic jugs,

50:43 - they do it over in another kitchen where they have big canners.

50:46 - But I still like to use my little 12 gallon canner that I have here.

50:52 - I can keep the temperature going,

50:53 - which needs to be about 160 to 180 degrees to re can.

50:59 - If I'm doing.

51:00 - This is where I do mostly glass.

51:02 - So the glass has to be heated.

51:04 - So it keeps the temperature of the sirup up.

51:06 - And that sirup will be anywhere, like I said from 160 to 180.

51:10 - And that will make sure that went up with the Thompson.

51:13 - And you lay them down, the tops will seal and that'll keep that sirup.

51:16 - Good for you to.

51:18 - So and this is what we used to use when I first started here,

51:22 - we did all of our gallon jugs in our half gallons on this little tiny canner.

51:28 - Now we've got a nice big one that we can put 2 or 3 barrels of sirup

51:32 - in, get that heated up and just canned all we want do all afternoon if we want to.

51:38 - But I kind of have a soft heart for this one,

51:40 - because this is what I started out on.

51:44 - All right.

51:45 - And we're just about at the end of the tour now.

51:47 - And I wanted to bring you into our little store.

51:50 - Now, as we have grown so large, it's not just a seasonal business for us anymore.

51:55 - We are open all year long.

51:57 - We make our products about every three weeks to keep everything

52:00 - nice and fresh.

52:01 - We give tours, all year.

52:05 - Not just during leaf season or sugaring season.

52:08 - We can give you a tour about any time.

52:11 - We have everything that we make on sale here in the little store at the farm

52:16 - at 119 Patterson Road in Westfield,

52:19 - outside the little town of Burnsville.

52:22 - We have our plastic jugs with all three grades of sirup,

52:27 - from medium to, robust to very dark, very strong.

52:32 - We have all of our extra value products,

52:36 - our basic products, our cream, our candy, sugar.

52:41 - Now we talk about all the

52:43 - high tech equipment that we have in the sugar house and the sugar bushes.

52:47 - But we also had to change here in the sugarhouse and the office

52:51 - from doing books and invoices and things by hand like I used to.

52:57 - Now we're into computers and, portable

53:02 - credit card machines and websites,

53:06 - things I'm trying to get used to, but it's kind of hard.

53:09 - But the young kids are doing really, really good here

53:12 - and they know all of that, so it's a lot easier for them,

53:16 - to take over the office and the running of the store.

53:21 - And I kind of just sit back and let them do it.

53:24 - But we'd like to thank everyone

53:27 - for coming to Patterson Farms today and letting me share what I love the most.

53:33 - And that is making maple sirup.

53:35 - And being here at Patterson Farms.

53:52 - You never.

53:59 - Ever, ever.