Mrs. Butterworth can take a flying leap

Have you been in suspense wondering about the output of the McFarland Sugarbush? Well, wonder no more. We've gotten a little over three pints so far, much better than I expected. Although we have to re-bottle things now that some of the sediment has settled, otherwise there's some weird black sludge inside. Yuck. I bought cheesecloth to strain it, but I don't know if Dan remembered to use it while bottling.

For comparison, I took this photo of a big sugaring operation up the road that can make 80 gallons of syrup a day. Here's their evaporator.



And ours.


And here's our finished product. I don't think it's quite fancy grade, it's a bit darker with stronger flavor. But still very nice. And it smells so nice while it's boiling down.

Slight hitch in the proceedings today. Dan went to boil down about 7 more gallons, and it went much faster than usual, and he left it unattended at the wrong time. So now our pot has a burned mess inside. Not quite sure if we'll be able to resume operations.