Sap to Syrup

Earlier in the March I happened upon a website called tapmytrees which described how simple it is to tap maple trees. While reading I discovered the two maple trees in our front yard would be perfect for tapping. Nathan (who is by now very used to my crazy ideas) happily made me four small spiles through which the sap would flow once I drilled the trees. Empty, cleaned milk and juice bottles worked as my sap buckets once they were wired to the spiles. We didn't start this experiment as early as we could have but we did get sap flowing for about a week. One tap seemed to be much "juicer" than the other three and produced the most sap by far. When the sap stopped flowing we had over a gallon of of sap to boil. The boiling process took a few hours one Saturday afternoon. When all was boiled down we had about 1/3 of a cup of pure, delicious, homemade syrup.

1. Late winter with day time highs above 40 and night time lows below freezing make perfect sap producing weather.

2. A juice bottle wired onto a spile ready for collection.

3. Drip.

4. The final result. Mmm.