A walk in the Woods

Just a Wednesday morning walk in the woods to collect a little sap. 

A Little Sap for breakfast don't mind if I do!

Maple Sugaring

If you remember a few months back we received a kit from Tap My Trees. We reviewed the kit and now you get to see it in action, Hear in Mo tree tapping generally takes place late Jan to early Feb. We have been watching the weather and the forecast looks good for tapping trees. Night time temps need to be below freezing and day time temps need to be above freezing 40+. Our 10 day forecast is showing just that. So off we went to tap a tree, hotrod girl picked which one to tap first. Of course she picked the hardest one to get to. As you can see the orange on the tree is where we marked it this fall to identify it as a Maple. We will need to re paint it when we pull the tap so that we can find it again next year. We double checked the twigs for opposing buds the best we could and there are maple leaves on the ground around the bottom of the tree. We drilled a hole about 2 -2 1/2 in deep. We got clean light colored shavings a good sign our tree is healthy. We made sure the hole was clear of shavings then we gently used the hammer to put the tap in. We hung the bucket on the hook, put on the lid. Now all that's left to do is wait and see what we get.

The Sap is RUNNING! 








That's right she is trying it straight from the tree. 

Look at that Sap Run !

How much do we have NOW !

Tap My Trees

Back at the beginning of fall I talked about me and the girls marking maple trees. Our hole jungle adventure was for this review.  We discovered a company called Tap My Trees if you have maple trees on your property you are going to want to check them out. Tap My Trees is a company that offers maple sugaring supplies. They have books on how to get started. They have kits with everything you need to tap your first maple tree. They even offer pictures and directions on how to identify different types of maple trees. This is our winter science project so you will see a few post on it between now and the time the sap stops flowing.  Maple Sugaring is a science experiment that taste yummy.

The basic idea of sugaring is turning sap into a yummy syrup you can eat.  You must do this during a specific time of year. The night time temperatures must be below 32 degrees and the day time temperatures must be above 32 degrees. Sap generally flows for around 4-6 weeks. You drill a hole in a Maple tree (you can tap several varieties of trees) In this hole you insert a spile and hang a bucket from it to collect the sap. The sap will run out of the tree into the bucket once you collect a large amount of sap it must be boiled down. Sap has a lot of water in it and you must remove this extra water from the sugary part of the sap.

For this review we received a tap my trees starter kit with aluminum buckets it sells for about $109.95 you can go directly to it by clicking this link http://www.tapmytrees.com/products/starter-kit-aluminum-buckets. This kit it includes the Following:

3 Aluminum 2 gallon buckets to collect the sap as it drips from the spile.
3 metal lids to prevent leaves and bugs from falling into your sap once it has left the tree.
3 spiles or taps that you put into the tree so that the sap may exit the tree into your bucket.
3 hooks so that you can hang the bucket from the spile.
1 drill bit that is 7/16 so that you can drill the perfect size hole for your spile
Cheesecloth: for filtering any solids you use this when you transfer your sap to the storage container.
1 Maple Sugaring at Home book: this little gem tells you everything you need to know including identifying maple trees and how to boil down the sap to turn it into maple sugar.

It has almost everything you need to get started. It has enough buckets and spiles to tap three trees. In addition to the kit you will need a cordless drill and some clean empty food safe jugs to put the sap in when your buckets need to be emptied. You will also need a large pan to boil your sap down in. You will want to boil the sap down out side. Boiling the sap produces a large amount of moisture and it can peel the wall paper off your walls. So its best to do it out side.

The weather is not quite right for tapping trees yet but I want everyone to say tuned because me and the girls will be documenting our sugaring experiment as soon as the weather is right to begin tapping our trees.

I am very pleased with the kit from Tap My Trees. The buckets are nice and heavy, and they came with lids to help keep leaves etc out. I also love that it includes the correct size drill bit for the spiles. I never can find the bit I need and I spend 20 minute digging in my giant bucket of bits looking for the right one. The Maple Sugaring at Home book is great! It helped us to identify the correct trees easily. It also has great directions for tapping the trees and it leaves nothing to be confused about. It is really a great book to have around if you are going to try maple sugaring. Just about everything in the kits is reusable for years and years as long you take care of it. The only thing you might need to replace is  the cheese cloth and after a while the drill bit as those do get dull after a while. Both things are affordable and easily replaced when needed.

The only thing I think is missing from the kit is bottles, to bottle you syrup after you have boiled it. We are planning on processing it in mason jars.

Now we wait for sugar snow. For us that's typically mid January to late February. Stay Tuned to Updates!

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We are going on a Jungle Adventure !

We are going on a Jungle Adventure! OK not really we are looking for healthy maple trees. Why are we tromping through the forest looking for Maple trees you ask.  That's because if we don't find and mark them now while they still have there leaves me and the girls wont be able to find them when it comes time to tap them. That's right we are going to explore the world of Sugaring.

In case you are not familiar with Maple Sugaring. Its is a process where you extract sap from a Maple tree and boil it down to make Maple syrup or sugar. Its quite a lengthy process and must be done when the nights are below 32 degrees and the days are above 32. That is the prime time for the sap to begin flowing in the trees. You only have about a 6 week window to collect your sap. Unfortunately there are no leaves on the trees during that time of year. So that means you either have to tromp around in the forest and mark your trees before the leave fall off in the fall. Or you have be able to identify the trees by the bark or the branches. I can identify a maple by looking at the branches but when the branches are 10 ft or more above your head they are kind of hard to see. So me and the girls have spent the last two days tramping around in the woods with a can of bright orange spray paint.

During this Maple tree finding process we have discovered several things.  First of which is that before we bought the property someone logged it and when I say logged I mean they basically clear cut it. I figure it was about two generations a go judging from the tree growth we have now. Thankfully they left enough trees so that they could reseed. The only trees that have been cut since then are the dead and damaged trees we take down for fire wood. So far we found 4 good candidates for tapping. We have also marked the saplings and Maples that are still too small for tapping. We marked them because when we begin clearing underbrush this winter we want to be sure we save the maple trees for the next generation. Second of all me and the girls learned that we need to do some serious brush clearing this winter. We ventured to the back side of the property where hardly anyone ever goes. The saplings and underbrush has gotten so thick I had to leave the girls on the other side of the creek so I could hack a path big enough to get through just to mark the tree.

So this winter I will be clearing paths to the Maple trees. I will clear a paths for both the ones that are ready to tap now and the ones that we will probably tap in the future. I may even bribe the girls into helping.

Stay Tuned for our Maple Sugaring adventures!