(gentle music) - Every once in a while, Tom and I will have a traditional breakfast for supper.

Whether it's waffles, french toast or pancakes we always enjoy them with fruit like strawberries or blueberries and of course, maple syrup.

I'm Mary Holm, host of "Prairie Yard and Garden," and in the past we have done shows on growing strawberries and blueberries, but we have never learned how to make maple syrup, until today.

Come along as we all learn together.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by "Friends of Prairie Yard and Garden," a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - I have always wanted to see how maple syrup is collected and made.

I mentioned that to my friend Ken Hovet and he said, "My neighbor and I make maple syrup pretty much each year."

Well, that was probably four years ago and since that time we went through Covid.

His neighbor was down with shoulder surgery and then they had poor sap run because of the weather.

This year, I called Ken and he said "We are collecting sap right now, so come and see."

And here we are.

Thanks Ken.

- Hey, glad to, Mary.

- How long have you been making maple syrup?

- I started out helping another fellow for about three years before I started doing it on my own.

And that's where I learned the whole process and what it takes to make maple syrup from maple sap.

This now is my second year on my own, doing my own cooking.

- [Mary] How did you get started?

- [Ken] I saw an ad in the paper and the guy was looking for help, so I answered it and drove down and talked to him and got the job.

(Mary and Ken laughing) Yeah, so that got me started.

He was a super nice guy.

He had been doing it for many years, but was getting the way he couldn't get around real well anymore, so he needed somebody to do the work in the woods, which is what I got to do.

And so I learned all about that.

- Ken, what kind of trees can you collect from?

- You can collect from maple trees.

Now there's several kinds of maples there's sugar maples and there's red maples and there's silver maples.

That's the ones you'll probably find in this area, mostly.

The sugar maples, the sap has probably the highest percent sugar of all of them, and then the red maples and the rest go down a little bit from there.

- [Mary] Is there an ideal size of tree?

- [Ken] Mostly you want your trees to be 10 inches to a foot in diameter or bigger.

You don't want to tap the smaller ones because it gets a little hard on 'em sometimes they don't survive if you get too aggressive with 'em.

- [Mary] Does it hurt the trees at all to tap them each year?

- [Ken] The larger trees, no, not a bit.

If you tap too small of a tree, it can hurt it a little bit and I suppose it won't necessarily kill 'em, but it'll set 'em back - [Mary] And then you can tap the same tree year after year?

You don't have to let it heal for a time?

- [Ken] Yeah, you can tap the same tree year after year after year.

You want to drill your tap hole in a different place each year because once you pull your tap out that tree will start to heal that hole and you don't want to drill into the same scar all the time.

- [Mary] Can you do more than one tap on the same tree?

- [Ken] If it's a big tree, two foot diameter or bigger, you can do two or three taps all the way around the tree.

- [Mary] And is there a certain height that you go to to tap the trees?

- Whatever's convenient (Ken laughing).

I usually drill 'em about this high because that's just where my elbow height is it's easy to drill.

You might as well do it where it's comfortable.

- [Mary] Then what are the tools that you need when you go out to tap a tree?

- [Ken] It's pretty simple.

Just the hammer and a drill and your taps and then whatever containers you want to collect the sap in.

Some people use plastic bags, some people use just milk jugs, or some people use a five gallon bucket and they'll stand it on the ground and run a hose from the tap into the bucket that works too.

- [Mary] Does the sap taste different in the beginning of the season of collecting as compared to the end?

- [Ken] Yes, it can.

if you collect too long into the season, if you get past the point where the trees are budding or starting to bud, the sap will turn a yellowish color and it tastes a little green.

And you don't want that, no, that's your signal to stop.

Then your season is done.

- [Mary] What conditions are needed or how do you know when to start tapping the trees?

- [Ken] You watch the weather in the spring.

Well, ideally the temperatures would be 40 degrees in the daytime and 20 degrees at night.

So thaw and freeze, thaw and freeze and then they'll be producing sap, no doubt.

The sap run will start.

- How long does this sap usually flow?

- Well, that varies each year too.

This year we probably had four days we did right here.

We're hoping yet this week now, because we have some more ideal weather that we might get some more, but the trees are starting to bud, so we might be done too.

But there's years that it could go for a month, two and that's a super good year.

You'd get a lot of sap and a lot of syrup.

- [Mary] How do you haul the sap?

- [Ken] We use five gallon pails on the ground.

The tube from the tap to the bucket.

We have a sled that we built that holds a bunch of five gallon pails.

It goes out and collects into the pails.

It'll bring that all back to a shop and he dumps that into a larger tote tank.

When that tank gets full, then he'll bring it over here to me.

- [Mary] Do you ever have to worry about critters trying to get into your sap?

- [Ken] It can happen.

Now in the five gallon pails, they always have lids on 'em, so nothing's gonna get in there, pretty safe.

- Could you show me how to actually tap a tree?

- Absolutely.

I have a demo right over here and I'll show you.

(gentle music) - In addition to their stunning beauty, flowers and plants provide many benefits to our daily lives.

Foremost, they provide a safe and nutritious habitat for our pollinator insects, who in turn help grow our food by sharing pollen among the plants they visit along their travels.

Three-fourths of the world's flowering plants and about 35% of the world's food crops depend on pollinators to reproduce.

But did you know that many plants grown right here in Minnesota provide therapeutic or medicinal properties for humans?

Plants have been used as a reputable method of healing for thousands of years.

Herbs, for example, are a great source of natural compounds used for a natural approach to prevention, healing, and health support.

At The Lamb Shoppe and Wellness Center outside of Hutchinson, they feature a full line of natural foods, organic produce, healthy personal care items and more that derive from all natural plant-based sources.

Connie Karstens created The Lamb Shoppe and Wellness Center to help empower health and wellness for people of all ages in a beautiful country setting, nestled quietly along the banks of the Crow River.

- Not only do plants contain a ton of vitamins and minerals, but they also have a lot of medicinal therapeutic properties.

It could be antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial.

Plants contain all kinds of medicinal properties and that's why it's so important for us to use our foods as medicine.

(gentle music continues) - It's a whole life approach, from when and where we eat to where our food comes from and how our food was produced.

The Lamb Shoppe provides grass fed, farm raised meats, including lamb, beef, chicken, eggs and turkeys raised naturally on the farm without the use of hormones, antibiotics or exposure to pesticides.

Fresh from their farm to your table.

To find out more about all natural health, nutrition and wellness options near you, visit minnesotagrown.com.

(gentle music continues) - So Mary, I'd like to show you how I tap a tree.

And what I use, first of all is a tap.

Well, this is one kind of a tap there's many different kinds of taps.

This is just a plain metal tap.

Some are made from plastic and some are bent around different shapes.

But this is a basic tap.

There's even some folks that just use a short piece of pipe about that size too.

Nothing special about these at all.

And then you need a drill to make the hole pretty basic, plain hole drill.

And then when you're done tapping and you finally pull your taps out, maybe the season is over.

Some people will plug that hole and some people don't.

If you do plug it, most folks will make just a plain old wooden plug, you can get square pieces of wood like this at a lumber yard, cut 'em off and sharpen 'em a little bit and you just tap that into the hole as a seal.

And then the other thing about that plug is that next year when you come to tap that tree, you'll see right away where you were the year before, the plug is easy to recognize.

And to tap the tree then, take your drill and then we're gonna want to go in about that far.

Probably the first joint in my thumb, but you want to get a deep enough so your tap goes in as far as it can.

Other than that, you're not gonna gain anything by going halfway into the tree.

This is a 3/8 inch bit and you use different size bits depending on what kind of tap you have.

Some taps are smaller diameter, so you'd use a smaller bit.

So to tap, usually find your spot on a tree, tilt your drill about that kind of an angle.

Again, it's not critical, but it's just so your tap, when you stick it in the hole, it points down, so it'll run out.

And you just (drill whirring) about that far.

And so then you have your hole.

Then you take your tap and your hammer, you stick that in there (metal clanking) and you're all done.

That's it.

That's tapping a tree.

- How long does it take the sap to start flowing after you put the tap in?

- If you're right on the verge of the trees starting to produce sap, it'll probably run almost immediately.

Now some of 'em will just drip really slow some of 'em will be a little stream coming out depends on the tree.

So the next to do here now would be, depending on what you're gonna collect your sap in, but you could put a hose on the end of this and then into a five gallon pail.

Or there's holes here, you can hook a wire on there and hook a little pail or you can hang a plastic bag on that.

There's all kinds of ways to collect sap, it's whatever you have and what you want to use.

But that's your tap.

- [Mary] And how long does it take to fill the pail?

- [Ken] Well, if it's a five gallon pail and if it's a good tree, you probably wanna be there every third day pretty easily, or it'll start to run over.

- So when you are done, you pull this back out.

How do you get it back out?

Is it hard?

- The other end of your hammer.

(Mary and Ken laughing) - Okay.

- just hook that on that tap (wood thudding) and he'll pop out.

And then for those that like to plug their hole, you'd stick a plug in it, the same plug I just showed you, and you tap that in (wood thudding) and you're all done.

That's it.

- Okay.

- And that tree then will heal around that plug and it'll be just like nothing ever happened.

- So then while you're collecting, you bring it back and you put it into this big tank then?

- [Ken] We do, yes.

- [Mary] And how long can you hold that sap until you start cooking it?

- [Ken] It has a lifespan.

depends on what your storage conditions are like.

If you're able to keep it cool, you're probably good for five, six days a week, maybe.

If it's warm, it can get sour on you and then you gotta dump it.

Fellow that I work with, that collects the sap, he keeps his tank in his shop and it stays pretty cool.

- If we get a batch of bad weather do you have to worry about the sap freezing at all?

- It will freeze.

I've experienced that before.

We had sap in a big tank and we hadn't gotten around to cooking it yet.

And it froze that night.

So there's this iceberg floating around on top.

If you take that ice out and throw it, all you're doing is throwing away plain water.

So you're really concentrating that sap more yet that's almost like boiling it.

Yeah, it'll freeze and you can get ice in it, but it's only pure water that freezes.

So the sugar stays in the bottom.

- [Mary] So then you have a couple of these big containers like this for your sap.

- He, the guy that I work with has a tank just like this one and when that gets full, he'll put it in the back of his pickup and he'll come over here and we'll empty it into this tank.

- [Mary] How much sap do you collect before you start cooking it down?

- [Ken] I like to have a full tank.

This is a 300 gallon tank.

The reason I like a full tank is because when I fill the boiler to start out with, it's all just plain sap.

And it takes a whole day of cooking before you can finally get some concentrated sap that you can draw off and then go finish in a different cooker.

It takes 30 gallons just to fill the boiler.

So you like to start out with enough and then you're going to continually add to it throughout the day as the moisture evaporates away.

So you have to have a good supply to get started.

- Ken, what happens if you start and then you get a heavy rain or a snow or whatever?

Can you hold it and then restart it?

- Yeah, I go in the house and watch TV.

(Mary and Ken laughing) - Okay.

- Yeah, I don't cook 24 hours a day.

Some people do, I don't.

But when it comes later in the evening, I'll just quit feeding wood into the boiler and just let it burn out and then it'll cool and I'll come out after it gets dark and I'll put covers on it and then sit that way overnight.

Next day I stoke it full of wood, light it up and then we go again.

- [Mary] Well, you need to show me your whole process for cooking off the sap and making it into syrup too.

- [Ken] I would be glad to.

(gentle music) - I have a question.

In times of drought, parts of my lawn turned brown.

Should I be concerned about that?

- Yeah, so we've had three years in a row now where we've had a pretty severe drought.

And so many of our lawns have been struggling and it's that cumulative effect of over time we've just been losing a little bit more grass.

And so in some cases we've had an invasion of certain weeds and just created space for different pests and weeds and things like that to take hold.

And so people are probably noticing their lawns looking a little bit thinner, maybe look a little bit browner or the encroachment of weeds.

So I'm kneeling here at the arboretum in a lawn that's unirrigated and receives very little pest control.

But it's a great example of what homeowners have been noticing in their lawns lately.

This is really dry, thin turf and really what you're seeing is in some cases, sometimes the grass is actually dead, but most often it's just going in through a stage of dormancy.

It's just a drought avoidance mechanism for the lawns to basically wait until there's more rainfall that they can use.

My recommendation is just to wait until we get a little bit more predictable rainfall and see what comes back from your lawn and how it responds to these drought conditions.

If and when we do get a little bit more predictable rainfall, you'll know if you did actually lose any grass in that area.

And if you did, that's when I would consider overs seeding sometime this fall, with another cool season turf grass species that is a little bit more drought tolerant, a little bit more drought resistant.

Things like the tall fescue or the fine fescues.

- [Narrator] "Ask the Arboretum Experts" has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska dedicated to welcoming, informing and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research and education.

- Okay, so Mary, I'm gonna walk you through my process here.

When my partner brings sap to me, he brings it over and he puts it in my holding tank, which is just a tote.

And from the holding tank, then I've got a pump in there that'll pump it up into this elevated tank that's up on stilts, basically.

And the reason I put it up there is so that it can flow by itself down to the boiler.

And I don't have to keep a pump running to do that.

And then it'll just gravity flow down to the boiler and that has a float valve on it that that line goes into.

And that float valve serves the purpose to keep the sap level in the boiler at a constant because as you're boiling it, you're getting rid of a lot of the water and so if you didn't keep refilling it, it's gonna get lower and lower and lower.

So the float valve will keep that level constant all the time.

As it goes into the boiler, it makes quite a long pathway through a bunch of channels and loops in the boiling pans.

And by the time it gets to the last compartment or the last channel, by that time it's concentrated enough, I can draw it off and I will periodically draw off two to three gallons.

And then I take that over to another pot on top of a gas burner and I boil it to finish it then.

So it's easier that way.

I have more control on the end product that way.

The boiler here works good to get it mostly concentrated, but it's a crude process.

It's hard to control to a real good degree.

- [Mary] What are you using to heat underneath here?

I can feel the warmth coming up - [Ken] Feels good.

(Mary and Ken laughing) Just wood.

Yeah.

I buy slab wood from one of the local sawmills and it's generally always hardwood, it heat's the best too.

- [Mary] What is happening here?

- [Ken] What happens in the boiler here, the way this one is designed, is that the raw sap, basically the sap from the trees comes in through here.

As you can see from the beginning here, it's basically raw sap.

Just about like water, doesn't have any color to it.

There's channels in the boiler here.

It comes in there, goes around twice, goes out, comes into this pan, goes across the back of it out and back through this pan.

And follows the pathway all the way through to the draw out point here.

All the time that it's making that trip, it's boiling and it's concentrating.

There's moisture leaving it all the way along.

And so when you get to the end, here's halfway through, you can see it's a little more concentrated, a little darker in color.

Then, as you get a little farther on down the line, it's more yet.

And then when you get to the draw off point here, now it's concentrated.

- [Mary] Now it looks like syrup.

- [Ken] Yeah, it's starting to look like syrup.

As you put sap in one end, that's constantly pushing all the way back to draw out point.

- [Mary] So now then you're saying draw off point.

So when it gets here, look, you've got a spigot here.

How do you get it from here over to your final cooking area?

- [Ken] I take a big pot and I set it down on the ground under that spigot and I just put about three gallons in there and then I take that and I pour it through a filter and into the next boiling pot.

- [Mary] And how long does that last section take to finish making the syrup?

- [Ken] I'll take about an hour, hour and a half.

You want it to have a little thickness, but if you overcook it, it's still good syrup, nothing wrong with it, but it'll start the sugar in your jars like sometimes honey will do in your cupboard.

Maple syrup will do the same thing if you concentrate it too much.

So you don't want to overcook it either.

You want to watch that pretty close when you make it.

- [Mary] How do you know?

- [Ken] I use a hydrometer to check it and I check it every few minutes just to make sure it's the right consistency.

The hydrometer actually measures the specific gravity of the syrup.

The higher the sugar concentration, the higher the hydrometer will float in it and it has a stem on it with markings and that's how you check where the concentration is and when you're done.

- [Mary] What temperature do you cook this at and do you have to worry about burning it?

- [Ken] Should never have to worry about burning it unless, for some reason the sap level in your pans get too low, it'd be like running a pan outta water on your stove, basically.

Temperature, I don't worry about, I just need to get it warm enough to boil, don't have to worry about exactly what temperature that is.

There's a thermometer on the draw off point here and I do watch that and that gives me an indication when it's ready to draw some off.

As sap becomes more and more concentrated with sugar, its boiling point goes up.

So that thermometer will tell me, based on the temperature about where that concentration is.

And it just gives me an indication when to draw it off and then go finish it.

- [Mary] So then you take it and you actually move it to another cooking area?

- Yes.

- And why do you do that?

- [Ken] Because the other one is much easier to control I can control it more precisely.

The boiler here does a good job of concentrating it, but it's a crude thing to try to control precisely and it just doesn't lend itself well to do that.

But the other cooker, I heat that with propane and it's really easy just to adjust the knob and get it just right and much easier to check on.

- [Mary] How long does it take you to cook a batch of syrup?

- [Ken] This boiler here, I can go through about 17 gallons of sap each hour.

So if you have 50 gallons of sap, that's gonna be about three hours of cooking.

- [Mary] How much syrup do you get from a big tank of sap?

- [Ken] That tank on the stand there is 180 gallons and it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, it takes a lot of boiling.

Maple sap, or I suppose any sap from any tree it has amount of sugar in it, which is what you're after.

But it also has minerals in it.

But when you boil that sap, those minerals will form almost a gritty sand.

And that's what I like to strain out.

Now, sometimes in the bottom of a jar of maple syrup, you might see a little bit of that.

It's certainly nothing that's ever gonna hurt you it's probably nutritious, but it just means that his strainer didn't quite do a perfect job.

- So you get it all cooked down to where you want it to be.

Then how do you keep it?

How do you preserve it?

- We put it in pint or quart canning jars.

And then if we think we're gonna keep it for, three, four months or longer, we'll actually can it we'll put it in a water bath canner and can it.

And then the jars seal and they'll be good for a long time.

You just keep 'em in a cool place and it'd be great shape.

- [Mary] How long does your syrup last then?

- [Ken] I've kept it for two years, pretty easily.

- [Mary] And what do you do with it all?

- Oh gosh, pancakes, waffles, ice cream, coffee, gifts for the neighbors or friends or enemies or whoever.

(Mary laughing) Yeah.

But it has no problem finding a home, no.

- [Mary] Well, thank you so much.

This is something I've wanted to see for years and I just appreciate you showing us.

Thank you so much.

- [Ken] Absolutely.

Glad to have you here.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden," is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative proud to be powering Acira pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

And by "Friends of Prairie Yarding Garden," a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden," visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues)