The Weblog
The local foods movement is alive and well in Champaign County! Here are some updates on other projects while we finalize our virtual market:
Local Producers Map:
Our local producers map is ready for publication and you will soon be able to find it on gochampaign.com. Copies will be distributed around the community, in the local telephone book, and other “hangouts”. The guide lists the location and contact information for nearly 50 local producers within our county. The map was a project of the Local Food Council and printed with the help of some local sponsors including the Monument Square District, Champaign Bank, the Community Improvement Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau and others. It is a great start to finding a local source for Champaign County’s finest!
How Sweet It Is!
And, what would Valentine Weekend be without a little sweet talk??
Today, in our ongoing series about local love, and the love of our vendors, we get a sweet blog from Marc Stadler of Valley View Woodlands!!
You love their products, you love the artistic way that he and Shary bottle the syrups, many of you have been to one of their boils…and now, Marc gives us the sweet low down on their maple syrup process…
“Tis the season!” We refer to the maple season, of course. Here at Valley View Woodlands, that sweet season has begun. It means spending time in the woods during longer, beautiful, sunny days. It means boiling down the collected sap on our stainless steel evaporator, watching through the sweet steam.
We tapped our maple trees last week—earlier than usual because of the warmer el nino year. We tapped and had our first boil a full month earlier than we did during last year’s extremely cold winter. Our first boil on Monday yielded only a half-gallon of syrup after five hours of boiling. This is typical for the first boil of the season, as the sap in the evaporator has to be concentrated or “sweetened” before you can draw off significant amounts of syrup. As we boil we are raising the amount of sugar in the sap from 2.5 percent to 67 percent. This requires approximately 45 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup! That’s why maple syrup is so special.
Deciding when to tap is subject of great debate among “maple people.” Taps will stay open for four to six weeks before they naturally dry out and begin to grow closed. Tap too early and you won’t catch the runs later in the season. Tap too late and you miss the early runs. We hope we didn’t tap too early, and that we will catch some big runs in mid-February.
Temperatures are well below normal now—the trees are frozen and no sap is flowing. We have some time to prepare for the next warmup, which we hope will occur next week. Sap flows in the maple trees when we have nights below freezing and days above freezing. The freeze-thaw cycle not only pushes the sap out into the buckets but also makes it sweeter.
This is a great time of year to enjoy our syrup on buttery pancakes and waffles—well, that’s true for any time of year! We also enjoy our syrup on Greek yogurt in the morning. That’s a tasty high-protein breakfast.
Stay tuned as we hope to be busy next week collecting and boiling that sweet sap.
Marc Stadler
Valley View Woodlands