My favourite maple...

Beautiful tree in tis time of the year. Which maple is it? Sugar maple?

Yes I believe it is, Klahanie. We have many different species of them here. Acer saccharum produces the sweetest sap. all species of maple may be tapped as well as birch trees.

Fabulous colour ,do you tap them for syrup Lori ,I had Maple syrup on my porridge this morning ...

Yes I have, Amy. we've been here three springs and I've tapped during two of them. the spring of 2012 it was very hot, in the 30's C., during the month of March and part of April and the trees went from dormancy into leaf in nothing flat...didn't bother to tap and further confuse things. This spring we had plenty of snowmelt and rain, so I felt better about tapping, but it was a very short run, because I didn't want to stress the trees after the dry seasons previous. As is typical I had too many irons in the fire...and didn't boil the sap long enough...the syrup I stored was too thin and went musty, even tho I stored it in the fridge! Like the apple jelly fiasco..it's still a case of live'n'learn for me. Have a huge harvest of black walnuts...it's a messy business but my son says I should build a bonfire and cook them like baking potatoes...that makes them easier to shell. It's such a lot of messy work that I didn't expect to do anything with them this year...from last year's nuts, I have two small trees.

The syrup sound a complicated affair Lori having to boil it to be just right ,I love it ! I remember your hands being black from the walnuts the other year ! you would think baking them would cook the nuts ,do they keep for very long afterwards ? you have all my favourite foods on your doorstep , do black walnuts taste any different from our normal white ones ?

I should have used a hygrometer, Amy. getting in a rush often means disaster and in the case of my maple syrup it sure did! it was of my own making because evaporating sap is not a difficult thing, I had too many irons in the fire. Mea culpa.
If properly dried and stored airtight the nuts should last at least as long as regular walnuts. I fancy that the taste is much richer with a bit of a tangyness. I think cooking them is the best way to ensure that they are clean. Removing the meat from the shells immediately after and drying with proper air circulation makes sure that the stored nuts will be wholesome. Once the shell is cracked a special pair of snips (wirecutters) with pointed blades helps remove the meat in larger pieces ...otherwise it's necessary to cut them into smaller pieces while still in the shell, just to extract the meat. Some experts use a contraption that is a bit like a combination vice and apple peeler! The vice cracks the nuts and the snips extract the meat and it's like a little assembly line.

No wonder shelled walnuts are so expensive to buy , we have a large vice in the Arcon which would probably do the job , we had a walnut tree in our garden when we moved here although not a black variety , the first year it was loaded with nuts I tried to pickle them as we are lovers of pickled walnuts but the results were too salty , the tree then mysteriously died we think it may have been Honey fungus but couldn't be sure ,if it was we were dreading it spreading through the garden but nothing else has died in the same way since ! not long ago I bought a jar of walnuts in honey as a treat very expensive but what a treat . you could do that Lori replacing the honey with Maple syrup ,yummy :o)

One of my favourite flavours of icecream is Maple Walnut....That sounds amazing, Amy. Will put that on the "to do" list! Thanks for the great idea.

:o)) ... Have you seen my Fairy door blog Lori ? you have a huge choice of trees to make a home for fairies :o))

Absolutely beautiful