#maple tapping

“You have never tapped a tree, have you?” asked Adam, picking up a bucket, “Let us go to the forest. I will show you how.”

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It’s maple syrup gathering season here where I live. From February to early April is when we tap trees in the Great Lakes region to make that awesome brown stuff that we love on waffles and pancakes.

Adam (Frankenstein's Creature), having spent time with First Nations folks in extremely remote parts of Ontario and Quebec, would be more then adept in helping harvest. He and Jo would have fun doing so, I imagine :)

Here’s a bit of the final product from last year, but we still have a few gallon jugs of tree sap in the fridge ready to continue boiling down!  It’s been leaving the house smelling like a bakery, and I’m so excited to see how much syrup we get this year!

My husband and I have been excited to try different recipes with the syrup, including spiced mead and maple candy!

The beginning of the path to base camp. Yes, I have to walk up these about 200 stairs. Every. Damn. Day.

All the maples tapped were marked with red ribbon in order for up to keep track of where they are.

Ooooooh. Boil that sap!!!

At the end of the night, I decided to take a picture of the coals. They reminded me alot of stars.

Behold!  Some maple syrup from our second year of maple tapping!  This is less than half of it, and we were able to get the consistency a bit thicker this year.  It’s been my husband’s pet project, and I’m so proud of him!  I’ve helped clean the equipment, and I’m always amazed at how simple the process is for something so rewarding.