Making Maple Syrup!

Or....

Maple Sap Collecting for Beginners!


Do you remember Santa bringing the girls the maple sap collecting kit?  Well, I just happen to know that Santa got the kit from Tap My Trees.  (the kit contains enough to tap three trees so that's what we did!)

And what a clever gift Santa brought!

We had a string of days we thought would be perfect for collecting maple sap.  We had the trees already marked off last fall.  So we gave it a whirl!  Okay, so in reality Mark did most of the legwork and well....everything.  I took the photos.

Mark drilling the hole with the drill bit provided in the kit.  (on the south side of the tree; angled up)

Excited girls, some still in pajamas, posing with our first bucket.

Trees #2 & 3 involved a walk trudging through the snow

That, my friends, is a Deer Super Highway:

   We also saw numerous signs of deer using our cedar knoll at the top of our hill as a resting place.  No actual deer was in sight though...with the amount of noise we were making it would have sent any creature scampering.  Okay, we weren't that loud but deer are pretty sensitive to noise.

Some of our best and biggest maple trees are located down a steep hill.

Pounding the tap into place.

Here's a 12-quart pot nearly full with strained maple syrup sap Mark collected from one productive tree. (after one full day)

And here's how much we ended up with:

About ONE cup of syrup!  (I think Mark was shooting for 7 degrees above boiling temperature)

The maple syrup was AWESOME!  I used some to flavor a cream cheese frosting for some pumpkin cookies I had baked.  

And the rest we had on waffles!

:-)

P.S. Just for the record- this is our first attempt at "harvesting" maple sap and turning it into syrup. 

P.P.S. (or is it P.S.S?) The kit also comes with a booklet for beginner sap collecting.