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[SJC <indexer AT localnet.com>]

Don Bowen wrote:
> The processes for making cane sugar is very similar to Sorghum Molasses
> except you go beyond the molasses stage.  You could make sugar from Sorghum
> molasses.  Similar process for beet sugar.
>
> Let's see:
> Honey.  Easy to get, just take the caps off the comb and drain.
> Maple Syrup.  Collect sap in the spring then boil off the water.
> Other trees can also yield a sweet sap.
> Sorghum Molasses.  Grow Sorghum, cut the whole stalk, squeeze out the
> juices, boil off the water.
> Cane sugar. Same as Sorghum except the molasses is taken a few more steps.
> Beet sugar. Grow sugar beets, harvest roots, mash, squeeze, boil off water,
> continue as cane sugar.
>
> Others?
>   
Several tree saps are good, process same as maple.  Here we tap birches 
(my favorite, as I'm not that fond of maple syrup, plus that's a cash 
crop around here, better to sell that one).   When I was still in IN we 
used hickory, another favorite, but hickories are few and far between 
here, not a good resource.  Some folks use butternut or black walnut, 
also not  favorites of mine, but a lot of folks like it. I'd not do 
anything to jeopardize a black walnut unless for some reason that tree 
not good for the wood, anyhow).  Basically, I'd say if you have an 
abundance of some sort of tree, try a run one spring and see how it 
goes.  Warning:  it takes a LOT of sap to get syrup (maple 40 gal to get 
a gal of grade A syrup, birch almost double that, others vary a lot, and 
they all will vary some year-to-year).  Warning #2:  Do not try to boil 
down sap in the house unless you are doing a tiny trial run.  You will 
be scrubbing sticky off walls, chair rungs, light fixtures, window 
frames, etc, for a year if you make a batch in the house!

Not a sweetening syrup per se, but when I was a kid my uncle always 
boiled down some cherry sap to syrup stage to be used as a cough syrup.  
And if that didn't cure ya, ya got the pine sap treatment, so we always 
tried hard to stop with the cherry.....

The other homestead-produced sweetener I use is boiled down fruit 
juices.  I usually steam fruits for the juice before going any farther, 
that juice I sometimes can for using as juice, but I always boil some 
down to use as syrup.  The berries make especially good pancake syrups.  
Cherry and apple I usually boil down quite a bit of the juice for 
syrup.  I don't necessarily boil it all the way down until it's any 
particular density, instead I boil it down until it's somewhere near 
right and can it.  Then when I go to use it, if it's not sweet enough, I 
either adjust recipe to fit it or boil it down a bit more.  This year I 
put back 26 quarts and 14 pints of finished apple syrup, and that will 
pretty much hold me for a year, I hope!  Sweet, soft apples that aren't 
good for much else are good for this use, then feed pulp to 
hogs/goats/whatever.  Mostly I use the apple syrup for making 
cookies.....I'm part of a group that meets every military transport 
plane in and out of Bangor International Airport and provides the 
guys/gals with cookies, drinks, thanks, and good wishes, so seem to be 
baking more cookies now than I ever did when I had kids at home!

SusanJane, in Maine