Maple Syrup Season Part 1

Full buckets of sap mean more syrup for us!

This spring has been great for maple syrup producers. We tapped our trees on February 15th.  This is one of the earliest starts we've had since we started making syrup 8 years ago. The weather has been perfect for good sap flow, which means we have had plenty of sap to turn into syrup!

Good Sap Conditions
Sap flows best when the nighttime temperatures drop below freezing and the daytime temperatures are in the 40's. All of this good temperature variation means that the sap is flowing and we are collecting gallons of good sap for boiling! We can leave our taps in and continue to collect it until the trees start to bud. This will happen as soon as the weather stays consistently warm. It's impossible to know how long a sap season will last. Some years, it's only a few weeks. Other years the sap season lasts for over a month.

Preparation
Before we can tap the trees, we have to clean out each of the buckets and boil each of the spiles. In addition, we have to clean out the sap collection barrels. Cleaning the buckets is tedious and time consuming. Each one needs to be scrubbed, cleaned, and rinsed. None of us enjoy washing buckets but it has to be done. This year, we cleaned all of our buckets. There were 36 in total.

Tapping the Trees
Once the conditions are right and the equipment is cleaned, it's time to tap the trees. This is always a fun day and we often get lots of family volunteers to help. Matt drills the hole and hammers in the spile. The girls hang the buckets and I place the lids on each one. It's always gratifying to hear sap dripping into a freshly hung bucket.

This year's group of volunteers!

Collecting the Sap

Once the sap starts flowing we collect the sap every day or two, as needed. We empty the sap from each bucket into a 58 gallon food-grade barrel that is strapped into the back of our Polaris Ranger. Some years, there is too much snow to drive the Ranger from tree to tree. Those years, we have to empty each bucket, one at a time. Thankfully, the snow has melted enough that we can use the Ranger to help with the work load!

Any visitors who come to our house in the Spring are subject to help collect sap!

Once the collection barrel is full, it's time to boil sap and make some syrup! I'll detail that process in a future blog post!