As of Friday, Match 21, 2008 **The Maple SyrupTaps Are In!**

After months of research, reading and talking with many folks about producing maple syrup in your backyard, I decided that I would give it a shot. After all, this is why we moved to Maine, right? With nothing to hunt, and it being still too cold to fish, why not take advantage of the cold nights and warm days and see what the local sugar maple trees will yield?

The first part of this experiment was locating some suitable trees. Our property is full of Pine trees (as I found out it was used as a tree farm about 40 years ago) so we have no Sugar Maple trees. We do, however have very nice neighbors who have allowed us to tap the trees they own. They are all very close to our property and will be pretty easy to access on a regular basis.

As of Friday March 21st, the taps are in! 6 trees, 15 taps and maybe more to come!

When reading about the methods to collect sap from the trees, I started thinking about tapping the trees the traditional way. This uses metal spiles (taps) that are drilled in to the trees, and from them you hang 2 or 2.5 gallon metal buckets to collect the sap. After a bunch of research I realized that this method is costly (about 25 dollars per tap,bucket and cover) and on warm days you could easily loose sap because the buckets can overflow. One advantage to metal splines and buckets is that they will last forever. Its not uncommon to see people tapping sugar maple trees with buckets and taps handed down through multiple generations.

The alternative to traditional tapping methods is to use plastic taps which feed UV protected plastic tubing which can empty in to a covered plastic 5 gallon bucket left on the ground. Not only does this give you more room to collect sap, but they are cheaper and will never fall off the tree. One disadvantage to this method is the plastic taps can break when you remove them and are just not as durable as metal.

Check back often- I hope to figure out how to post some pictures and keep you updated on how we make out.