Tapping Trees

I've have been considering tapping maple trees and making my own maple syrup for years now but had never gotten around to it. Somehow I had convinced myself it was this long, tedious project that I was sure to mess up.

This year it seemed as though everyone in the whole world region had tapped their trees and I was feeling ridiculously jealous.

So last night I stopped just talking about it and Jonny and I headed out into the bush to tap a couple trees. (Being that he is awesome (or sick of hearing me whine about how everyone had taps in) he picked up some taps from the farm store on the way home from work).

Some people think ahead a lot better than I do. It's really a good idea to scout out maples in the summer when you can see their leaves and mark them to return to in the spring. Luckily I had tons of pictures to refer to and a pretty good idea what the bark looked like. We found two healthy looking maples and put one tap in each. The sap started dripping out right away. I was sooooo excited. I really get excited about stuff like this lol.

Then there was nothing to do but wait for morning.

This morning it was barely light out when I woke up already wondering how much sap there would be. I know that sap only runs while the tree is warm and that it had froze overnight but a girl can hope!!

There was about a cup of sap between the two buckets. I'll consider that success for the first night! Obviously we had to take it back to the house and boil it down RIGHT AWAY.

So, while I'm googling how to properly boil down sap, Jonny just throw it in a pot on the stove and gets it boiling. I guess it really didn't need to be any more complicated than that, because about twenty minutes later it was a dark, rich maple syrup. Maybe only a tablespoon or so, but enough for us to taste it.

We are hooked! As I write this, Jonny is contemplating how many more taps we can put in and how we would boil down that much sap.

I will update again soon with pictures!!

*** Update - Click Here for my update on Making Maple Syrup ***