The final batch of maple cream was made today and when it is gone, we'll have to wait for Spring 2012 and hope for a good supply of light amber syrup. If you anticipate running out before April 2012, it would be wise to place your order. The cream will store just fine in the freezer. For those of you who haven't tried this delicious product, it is made from pure light amber maple syrup, heated to around 235 degrees, cooled and the taffy-like consistency comes out of the maple cream machine like frosting or spun honey. Quite simply, there isn't anything else like it and putting it on toast or between ginger cookies is divine!

 With only an inch or two of snow on the ground and the lakes not frozen , we are experiencing a very dry season. We are down 5-7" of moisture and this is the first time we have seen cracks in the soil throughout our 17 acres of forest. Here is a link for more weather info for the Twin Cities: http://www.climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/dry_fall_msp_2011.htm   What effect this will have on spring sap flow remains to be seen.

 With the holiday season in full swing, consider making your gift giving easy and have us ship some maple syrup or maple cream to friends and family. 

The crisp morning air of autumn gets the Somerskogen team motivated to complete our fall work in preparation for the 2012 maple season.

This summer we experienced harsh, straight line winds which not only dropped branches on most all of our lines, but it also snapped off mature maples as large as 70 feet tall and over 110 years old! We had planned on expanding the size of our sugarbush this year, but with all the storm damage, we haven't had the time.

More than a dozen trees were lost and power equipment was required to remove much of it from the sugarbush.  On a positive note, we will definitely have enough firewood for the evaporator for a few years!

Our supply of syrup is starting to dwindle. Check your supplies and place your order before the holidays to avoid being disappointed. The Somerskogen plastic jugs in a variety of sizes are easy to ship to friends and relatives.

The maple cream has been very popular. One returning customer has been eating so much of it he thinks he may need a 12 step program! He was only joking, but you get the idea! It's very tasty!! 

The main tasks we are doing in the woods this summer include maintaining and improving our tubing collection system.  We will be expanding the pipeline a little bit, bringing a couple hundred new taps into our collection network, and hopefully increasing our total production.  We have wanted to do this for a while, but it wasn't until we had the Reverse Osmosis machine up and working this year that we felt comfortable that we had enough time to process the extra sap that we expect to collect.