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   Syrup production continues. The flow of sap from the walnut trees has been sporadic for the past two weeks. When both nighttime and daytime temperatures are above freezing, no sap flows. The same is true for below freezing temperatures. If it is above freezing during the day and below freezing at night, most of the walnut trees produce sap like crazy. By last Friday, I had every refrigerator spot available cooling the collected sap. I decided I would boil it all down as I was out of storage space and the temperatures were supposed to be above freezing all weekend.

   I fired up the wood stove in the cabin and put eleven gallons of sap in the evaporator pan. According to my precise calculations, I should be able to obtain twenty-two ounces of walnut syrup from this run. I ran down to the cabin every two to three hours to add more wood to the stove, attempting to get the sap to a rapid boil. Billie, the poodle, went with me each time. He ran around enjoying the pleasant winter days, chasing the geese off the cabin lawn and looking for rabbits. Though he was greatly enjoying the process, this many trips and so much exploration was beginning to make him look like a vagrant rather than the prim and proper house dog he is supposed to be.

   Sunday morning, the eleven gallons was concentrated down to about one gallon. I decided to bring this to the house and finish it in the kitchen so I could watch it more closely as it neared the proper temperature and concentration. Closely watching syrup boil is not very exciting. It seemed to be taking forever to boil off the last amount. My wife decided to give Billie a shower and I agreed to dry him while I waited. When she got done washing and drying the dog, I made a quick check on the sap before the dog and I headed for the garage with the hair dryer. I guessed it would be at least another hour before it was done.

   In about fifteen minutes of blow drying and brushing, Billie again looked like a proper poodle rather than a ruffian rabbit hunter. I strolled into the kitchen to see the sap boiling almost to the top of the large kettle. The temperature of the finished syrup was supposed to be 219 degrees. It had been increasing about a degree per hour so when I went to the garage and the thermometer read 217 degrees, I felt I had plenty of time. The temperature read 245 degrees. I immediately turned the stove off and thought almost two weeks of messing with this had been ruined in a few minutes. The best I could hope for was I had made walnut candy. More likely, I had burned the batch and would be throwing it all away.

   I set the pot of syrup off the stove onto the counter to let it cool down so I could assess the damage. I tasted it when it cooled enough to not remove my taste buds. I was surprised it did not taste scorched or burned. Actually, it tasted great. I poured it into jars and found I had nineteen ounces which was fairly close to what I was expecting. Some of the syrup remained stuck to the bottom of the boiling pot. I scraped this off and placed in bite sized blobs on parchment paper.

   The end result of over-boiling is syrup that is thicker than it is supposed to be but tastes fine. It has the consistency of honey. The part I scraped off the bottom cooled to sweet hard candy. I think I was only seconds from ruining the whole batch, but I got lucky and have some great products from our walnut tapping.

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