No, we didn’t take up dancing. We do have however several maple trees that we tap some years to make our own maple syrup. Would you like to come along on our maple syrup making journey?
Stage 1:
You need cold, below freezing temperatures at night and sunny, above freezing days.
We tapped three trees this year.
Tony drilled the tree at a slight angle about 3-4 cm deep,
using a 1/2″ bit.
and here it is.
We inserted the spigots
The sap stated flowing right away.
We hung the bucket,
and moved on to do the same thing on the next tree. And the next one.
Now, we just need to wait for them to fill up!
It looks like it will be a good year for maple syrup and the hostages consume large quantities of it!
Stay tuned for the Stage 2 report! In the meantime we are taking bets on how fast the buckets will fill up.
Producing maple syrup is an art! I can hardly wait 😋
Lets just say that we are not in the Van Gogh league. Ours is edible 🙂
Yes. And that is much better!😉
Very interesting. Hope you do well with this endeavor.
Thank you! We do too!
Ahhh tap time. My stepson lives in Huntsville and taps his trees. We usually scoop a bottle or two whenever we get up for a visit. Looking forward to the next instalment. I understand that the boiling down process is lengthy.
It is a lengthy process. We used to do it over open fire which was a bit more demanding, but we modernised a bit 🙂
Yum Yum! Don’t forget to pour some hot syrup on clean snow for some delicious toffee.
We were just talking about that! Remember they used to do this at Mel Lastman Square for the winter festival?
That’s awesome! About how long does it take to fill up a bucket? Look forward to round two
It really depends on the weather. Under perfect conditions it could fill up in a day or two!
Awesome! Wish we had Maple Trees out west!
I didn’t know you don’t! I guess I never given it any thought 🙂
I’d like to try this some time. Is it as simple as you make it look? Does it harm the tree at all? How often can you tap the same tree? I’m going to assume that not all trees are alike in terms of sap production. Is there any way to tell from the outside that a tree is likely to produce more or is pure luck? So many questions—a problem with us teachers. 😁
Looking forward to part two along with the post about taking up tap dancing.😎
You have the best questions! I was going to do a post with more detail, but I might as well answer at least some of your questions. A healthy tree will recover from this wound with no issues. You can tap the same tree every year, and if it a larger tree you can have more than one tap on the same tree at the same time. Not all trees produce the same amount of sap, but I don’t know of a way to tell that ahead of time, other than perhaps the size and health of the tree. If it has a lot of dead branches it may have less sap because sap is produced for live limbs. We are no experts, just hobbyists…there may be an expert amongst our readers that can chime in with more info.
As to tap dancing, I may be able to convince Tony to try it out, but it’s highly doubtful 🙂
Maple syrup is one of my favourite treats, I am very grateful to those who have the patience to carry out the long and precise boiling phase.
Love it too! We don’t make a lot so the process is bearable 🙂
I love this! Thanks for sharing the process and can’t wait to see the results!
Thanks, John! We’ll share as we go. Hopefully it will be a good yield of liquid gold!
when I was working in a hotel in Lisbon, we used to host many tourists from Canada and they always offered us maple syrup, it was like a tradition 🙂 PedroL
It is! Canadians love to share their maple syrup 🙂
And I loved to receive it ahah regards, PedroL
Fantastic! I can’t wait for the second leg of the journey.
Coming soon 🙂
How very Canadian of you. What a great idea to make use of your maple trees. I’m so curious as to how this turns out.
Very! Based on the weather the past couple of days it’s not going very well. Hopefully it will warm up a bit!
that is so cool – I had no idea it was that simple. It must taste so good. Thanks for sharing the details!
it’s pretty simple if you have maple trees! Hopefully the weather cooperates a bit better.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any maple trees!
So I hear! I didn’t realize that there aren’t any on the west coast.
I’m on the east coast, and while there are plenty of maple tress in our neighborhood, we don’t have one on our property…
Right! My bad 🙂
Would love to have the experience of tapping fresh maple syrup and eating it over pancakes for breakfast!
It’s a lot of fun. Delicious too 🙂