Maple Sugaring...

I found out that you can tap a silver maple tree for sap to make maple syrup.  What I had always heard is that you had to have a Sugar Maple tree.  Not so!!  There are many trees that can be tapped in the winter/spring that will give wonderful sap that can be processed into delicious syrup.  Thanks to the internet,  I found this out at almost the end of the season and I didn't know if it would even work.  As you can see in the picture below, it did indeed, work! I ended up getting about 10 half pints of syrup!  It is still flowing somewhat,  but not enough to process now.  I will probably take the taps out soon and plug up the holes that I drilled.  I have also read that you can drink the sap as a '"spring tonic".  I haven't tried that yet...maybe at some point.

 Here is the tree that I tapped.  As you can see,  it is a very large tree.  I bought two taps but could have used 3 on it.  When the sap was flowing freely,  I was getting about 2 to 4 gallons a day.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  And it takes a whole day to cook it down.

Here is a picture of my set up...

This is the tree that grew up on it's own... I had to have part of the trunk cut off a few years ago because it was pushing against the shed roof.   

A close up of the sap in the milk jugs,  
it looks just like water.

This project was a lot of fun.  I hope to start a little earlier next year.  I would like to make enough to supply the whole family.  They will only get one jar each this time... lol

'Til next time,
Love ya,  Jean