It's seems like yesterday that we were walking around muddy fields, tapping trees and hanging buckets to catch maple tree sap for this years' syrup. Wait a minute... it WAS yesterday or nearly. Today as most of you know, we are being dumped on by more March Snow. The farm is white again. The livestock are hunkered down in their shelters. The heated buckets for water are all plugged in again. March continues to live up to its reputation. With wind and travel advisories, we're staying put. Karla, our first intern to arrive for this season has been commuting back and forth a few days during the week. She turned back before getting to Forest Lake this morning after crawling no faster than 25 mph and stopping to clean the ice off her windshield wipers.
Robin collected about 8 gallons of sap from the buckets hanging on the maples in the yard, and is using it to brew some batches of Maple Oatmeal Stout and Maple Amber Ale using maple sap instead of water. She did it last year and it was superb. Robin shoveled nearly a foot of snow out the walk way from the house to the barn and shortly after morning chores it was almost as if she had never shoveled - the blowing snow filled in all of our tracks. It looked like we haven't been out there at all. We spent the day catching up on inside activities like brewing, baking bread and researching rather obscure topics like raising tilapia and how to use a cream separator.
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| There's a hole in the bucket dear Robin dear Robin....... |
We use buckets from the Acadia Cafe (NGDF shareholder) to collect the sap in. We drill a 1" hole just under the top rings. This is just right to hang the bucket on the metal spiles drilled and tapped into the trees. We smap on a lid and run a baler twine under the handle and around the tree to keep it from blowing off in the wind.
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| Karla and Robin ready for some tapping action...... |
Robin has the twine and the battery powered drill, Karla has the buckets and taps. They'll start on the trees in the yard and eventually tap the trees that border of our farm. Our neighbor lets us tap those trees each year.
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| Which way does this thing go again? |
The 7/16" hole is drilled on the side of the tree that is exposed to the south and east. A good run requires days above freezing and nights below freezing.
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| Karla records Robin's hole drilling skills...... |
Two years ago with fewer taps, we collected over 400 gallons of sap. Last year, the run was shorter but we still collected nearly 200 gallons. When the trees begin to bud we will pull the spiles, but with 46 taps in the trees, we should have plenty. It takes 40 gallons of sap to cook down into 1 gallon of syrup.
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| Tap Tap Tap.... I guess that's why they call them taps. |
The spile has a fin-like shape. We place the hole in the bucket over the spile and it holds there. We snap on covers so the bugs and squirrels don't take a swim. Then we tie them on with twine for wind insurance.
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| The tap (or spile) ready for the next step, hanging the buckets... |
In some of the trees, the sap was already running and it started to drip out of the spile right away. That was true of this tree as well but my photo timing was off so I never caught the mid-drip picture.
As the sap run progresses, we check the buckets in the yard first. If there is a lot of sap in those buckets, we know to go and collect next door as well. Soon, we'll be getting the sap cooking stove our of storage, setting it up and begin cooking sap down into syrup. Forty gallons of sap cooks down to one gallon of syrup and we can cook about 60 gallons of sap in a day - more if we put in a really long day. Stay tuned for more pictures
