We are back from collecting sap and boiling it down into syrup and sugar. What a great experience. We left the taps in the trees because the sap will continue flowing all through March (until the leaves come out on the trees, then the tree will begin to make new food again through photosynthesis). Our friend will continue to drink the delicious sap (which has the look and consistency of water but tastes just a little sweet) - she’s a raw foodie. Maple sap is an amazing spring elixir and tonic.

First, locate your maple tree. Right now in Western Pa it has small red buds. The bark is light gray and smooth with fine vertical ridges when it is young, as it matures it will turn dark gray with deeper ridges. You’ll be able to see the bark in the pictures below. You want a tree that is at least 10 inches in diameter, or has about a 31 inch circumference. The guidelines in this bulletin from the University of Maine’s cooperative extension let you know how many taps you can put in a tree based on the size of the tree.

One of our beautiful budding maple trees!

You can tap any kind of maple tree for syrup, whether it is a sugar maple or not. Red maples, silver maples any kind of maple. Sugar maples usually have more sugar in their sap than others, but that is not always the case. It does take quite a lot of sap to make syrup, though (you’ll see in later posts.) But it’s about 40:1, so 40 quarts (or 10 gallons) of sap water will boil down to about 1 quart of syrup. By the way, other kinds of trees can be tapped for syrup as well including sycamore and birch.

First, we used a battery operated drill (you can also use a hand crank) to drill a 1/2 inch hole about 2-3 inches into the tree, at a slightly upward angle (so the sap could flow down our spile into our jug.)

Drilling a 1/2 inch hole about 2-3 inches into the maple tree

Then we tapped the spiles which we made from staghorn sumac (see our previous post for info on how to do this) into the hole. The sap immediately started dripping out of our spile. Luckily we picked a beautiful sunny afternoon to tap the trees. The trees need to be about 40 degrees F for the sap to flow. It flows best in the late winter/early spring, when temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop below freezing again at night.

Tapping in the spile we carved out of staghorn sumac

We used empty plastic water jugs to collect the sap. We actually left the top on, but made a hole (or sometimes an “x” with a knife into the side of the jug,) which fit over the spile. This allowed the sap to flow directly into jug, protecting it from wind or rain and kept bugs and other debris out.

Placing the jug over the spile to collect the sap

We could have made a notch in the spile and hung the jug from their, but we chose to put a nail in the tree and hang the jug from there. (Really the jug stayed on the spile by itself, but we did this just in case.)

Tapping a nail into the tree to hang the jug

You can buy maple syruping supplies like metal spiles and buckets on line (or if you are in New England maybe even at your local hardware stores.) But we had fun carving our own spiles and catching the sap in these jugs worked quite well.

Stay tuned to find out how we boiled it down to make delicious syrup and delectable candies.

I’m so excited that the earth is waking up and that wild food will soon be out in abundance!!!

Love,
Melissa Sokulski from Food Under Foot