It's Time!!

Tree tapping time, that is! After a very chilly February, and even days last week where the high temperature was in the teens, warmer weather is finally here.  Which means the maples are going to be chugging sap up from their roots out to the tips of even their furthest branches in preparation for popping out leaves in a few weeks.  Which means that it is time to tap trees and make syrup.

The this little place here weather forecast for the next ten days sounds perfect: highs above forty every day, and nights hovering at or below freezing.  Yippee!

So, today I went out after lunch and set taps.  Boy, I can't tell you how much easier it is to get back into my 'sugarbush' on the road DH cut through the woods last summer than doing it the 'old' way of having to walk to the far north or far south corner of the field, east on the woods roads at either [north or south] end and then over almost halfway along the east line to get to where the greatest population of maple trees is.  Now all I do is walk through the field to the Maple Road (can you guess why we named it that?) and follow that road due east into the sugarbush.  Feelin' a little spoiled now.

Once again this year I'm using my poor man's maple syrup set-up: spiles given to me by Mother-in-Law years ago, saved and washed out milk jugs for the sap to drip into, 5-gallon buckets to haul and store sap, my turkey fryer for boiling down the sap into syrup, and canning jars for storing the finished syrup in.

poor man's sap bucket

trees with their white plastic appendages

a two-tapper tree!