Tag: maple sap
Boiling
Collecting Sap
Half Tapped
We got the trees at the top of the driveway (12), the ones at the bottom (2), and the ones along the river (9) tapped today. 23 trees tapped. Tomorrow, we’ll get the back woods (17 trees), the black walnuts at the farm (three or four), plus the new trees at the farmhouse (no idea — at least one huge black walnut and one huge sugar maple). That’s around 23 more. Which means we are halfway done tapping!
Although there is one up the hill at the bottom of the driveway and two more up a hill along the river that we don’t generally tap (fetching sap is dangerous, especially as the ground thaws and it is muddy!). There are also the two maples by the house that never produce sap, the enormous one by the river that I was very disappointed to learn also does not produce sap, and the big sugar maple in the front yard that we are letting recover. Seven untapped trees.
2024 Maple Season: First Batch
We finished our first batch of maple syrup — about 3.25 gallons completed boiling last night and have been bottled and sealed today.
2024 Maple Season: Still Collecting Sap
2024 Maple Season: Flame On
2024 Maple Season: Sappier
2024 Maple Season: Sap Collection
We started collecting our maple sap — somewhere around 80 gallons of sap which will make 2 gallons of syrup. This is the first year we had kitten helpers – they were rather puzzled by the ratchet straps and buckets on the trees, but they enjoyed that we were playing in the woods with them. Even if they couldn’t figure out what our game was.
2024 Maple Season: Tree Tapping
We’ve got 43 maple trees and two black walnut trees tapped. 18 maples were tapped yesterday in the back woods (plus the one right by the driveway).
The big maple by the river, that I’ve been waiting to tap since we found it … had nothing! Hopefully sap starts flowing there too. The other trees, though, were drip, drip, dripping steadily