Tapping Trees - Maple Syrup 2014

Although this seems to be the winter that never ends, spring really isn't all that far away. Which means that maple syrup season is quickly approaching. This past weekend we decided to tap our trees even though it's still a little early. The sap won't start flowing until the temperatures warm up a bit, but at least it's done and we won't have to scramble to do it on a weekday if the weather decides to shift.

Somehow in the move we ended up misplacing all of our spiles and lids, so Saturday morning we made the trip out to our local maple syrup supplier to pick some up. In the past we've used plastic spiles, but we bought metal this time around since they're cheaper and we're hopeful that the others will show up at some point.

Armed with buckets, lids, spiles, a battery powered drill, a 7/16 drill bit, a cast iron spile driver, and a hammer, we put out 15 buckets (on 10 trees). The snow has drifted and is pretty deep in some areas, so we kept things pretty close to the house. In the future we may come up with some sort of plan to tap the trees further away on the property, but who knows. We're quite happily "hobby" scale and have no visions of sales in our future.

This will be our third year of maple syrup making. The trees at our old house produced tons of great sap for us, so we're hoping the trees at the new house are just as good!