Okay, here is my sharing about making maple syrup for treating coughs:
So, I heard about this maple syrup thing for coughs. I thought, why not give it a shot? First off, I needed to get my hands on some maple trees. Luckily, I got a bunch in my backyard. These things are huge, I mean, really big, like more than 25 inches around. They say you can tap those big boys.
I grabbed my drill and made a hole in one of the trees. It was kind of angled upwards, like they said, about waist-high. Then I stuck a tap in there and gave it a little whack with a hammer. Easy peasy. Hung a bucket underneath to catch the sap.
Collecting sap was a waiting game. I checked on it every day, and slowly but surely, the bucket started to fill up. It looked like watery, slightly sweet stuff. Didn’t look like syrup yet, though.
- Waited for the sap to collect.
- Checked the buckets regularly.
- Transferred the sap to a bigger container.
Next up, boiling. I poured all the sap into a big pot and set it on the stove. This part took forever. I mean, hours. I had to keep an eye on it, make sure it didn’t boil over. Slowly, it started to thicken and turn that nice, amber color.
Boiling was a whole process.
Some folks use a special filter, something called a Reverse Osmosis filter, to speed things up. I didn’t have one of those, so I just stuck to the old-fashioned way. Long story short, I ended up with a nice batch of homemade maple syrup. And let me tell you, it tasted way better than that store-bought stuff.
Tried a spoonful for my cough, and you know what? It actually helped! So, there you have it. My little maple syrup adventure. Not too shabby for a first-timer, if I do say so myself.
If you have some spare time and have some maple trees in your backyard, you must try this fun and useful stuff at home!
Discussion about this post