 Before we head over into my wood lot to tap a few maple trees to get some sap, I'd like to talk briefly about tree identification. This book I picked up several years ago. It's a Centennial book that the Maine Forest Service put out of trees in Maine. And I've always had a problem identifying some trees. You know, I've been a maniac all my life. So, you know, some trees such as maple, there's several different types of maple. There's Norway maple, red maple, rock maple or sugar maple. And it's had for me to identify one tree from another. So I picked up this book, which is a great guide to tree identification. And I turned it to, so I wanted to just say that this is a great book. If you want to identify a lot of Maine trees, this is a great book to reference book to go to. But as far as maple trees go, how do I identify these different types of maple? And I've found that the red maple, which you can see here the leaf, has kind of jagged edges on it. Going around has kind of a jagged edge. Whereas the sugar maple or rock maple, the edges are more smooth. It looks very similar in shape, but the only difference is the edges of it. To look at the back of a maple tree, for me, it's pretty doggone had to identify a tree by the back. But by the leaf, you can see the difference. So we're about ready to go over to my wood lot, set out a few buckets, see what we can get today. This morning is about 14 degrees. It's supposed to get up into the 30s, I believe today. So this might not be a good run sap day. Usually, you know, to get up into the 40s would be much better run. But anyway, we're setting them out and tomorrow's supposed to be a real good warm days and a cold night, which is what you need. We should get a pretty good sap run tomorrow. So we'll head over to the wood lot. Headed over to my wood lot. You can hear the rattling in the back probably of the buckets and the covers and so forth. And I gotta tell you, I'm a real novice at the sap collecting. I only started it like three years ago. You know, when I was a kid, my mother used to tap the maple trees, which were on the front lawn, and she would boil it down in the house. And one time, she was multitasking, as she often did, trying to get three or four things gone at one time and left the sap on the wood stove and it got down to the stage where it was ready to turn into syrup. But it boiled a little too hard and she went out to check it and the sap was, the sugar was dripping from the ceiling. We had a metal ceiling in the kitchen at that time. The sap was, it overcooked and was, the steam was full of syrup and it was a sticky mess she had to clean up. So much for multitasking. But my wood lot, I have a wood lot which used to be my parents of 125 acres. And it's a mixed growth, a lot of pine, a lot of different types of trees on it. But this one particular area, which I have started to cut out the underbrush and cut out the green growth and just let the hardwood come, which is mostly maple and it is mostly red maple. And I find that red maple doesn't seem to produce as much sap as the rock maple or sugar maple does. But it does produce sap and it does boil down and make some nice maple syrup. So we were about a mile away from the wood lot and I will soon be there. Yeah, here we are at the wood lot, headed in the woods road. As you can see this is mainly pine here with a lot of young, young growth coming up in between it. I have a guy come in every so often to do some selective cutting and which has worked out well for keeping the lot active and you know, generating a little money to pay the taxes and so forth and keep it cleaned up. This area on the left hand side here is the area which I had been started, I guess it's about three years ago I started to try to thin it out and keep the nice maples, the young maples coming. As you can see there's a lot of young growth here, some that you know, maybe anywhere from four to six inches in diameter, which is too small to tap really. I think they recommend a tree which is at least eight to ten inches in diameter would be eligible for tapping and as you can see I put out some buckets the other day and have collected some sap here yesterday. So you can see I still have a lot of work to do down through there. I really want to thin it out and get rid of the green growth out of there so it lets more light in for the maples and mainly this lot has just red maples. Very few if any sugar maples are in this area but it does as I say it does produce and so it's kind of a fun thing to do and keeps me active and so that's why I do it and I love maple syrup. So we're going to pack up here or have a saw mill here which produces some stuff for us to build with or whatever. Right now in the winter we don't do much sawing but we're going to we're going to tap down through this area here on the left hand side which has cleaned out to some degree and a lot of rattling going on here and we'll go to work tapping. We've got different, they got all kinds of taps out now these are some of the old taps that they use. You drill a hole into the tree which we have a drill here which is made for for this and this this tap is like a seven sixteenths tap. They have three eighths taps. They also have plastic taps and tubes which you can use you know on big operations you can string lines, plastic lines through the woods and collect it that way. You don't have buckets, you have you know a central place for the sap to run and and collect it at one spot but this is just a rinky-dink operation here and and we're putting out the buckets and and just having a good timing. So these are the covers which will go on top of the buckets to keep rain and snow out which work really well. These are galvanized buckets and they also have I have some aluminum buckets so all right we'll just gather up our stuff and head in. I recommend as I understand it is each year when you tap you try to find the hole that you tapped last year and you know you can see that I tapped this tree right here last year and they recommend that you go at least at least a six inches lower or six inches higher and keep at least a six inch spread away from that hole and you do that each year. So last year I tried to I was always thinking that the south side of the tree would be the best side because the sun hits it and you'd get the most production of sap but I'm not so sure that's that's always true. This drill you drill a hole about inch and a half deep and and that that type of drill which made special for that is cleans all the chips out of the hole. I'm going to put the tap in the hole and I got this little hammer I drive it in as far as I can drive it. Set the bucket on it just like that and we'll be putting a cover on top of it. Sometimes the sap instantly starts to come but I haven't you know it's just too cold this morning. Pretty pretty easy this is the easy part of the operation when you got to haul around a bucket and collect from each tree that gets a little more labor-intensive. The wind last night blew that cover off but this is where I grew up and my parents house and these trees here this tree and that tree my mother planted uh it doesn't seem like that many years ago that big maple there and this big maple and the one over there were here when I was a kid and there used to be two more up here and one more down here used to be like six trees here and uh they're gone but these are rock maple here sugar maples and I don't know if they're warm enough for the sap to be running you can see a little bit frozen on the bottom of that but seems like the rock maple or sugar maple the sugar content of those trees seem to be higher than the red maple we checked them the other day when I took them over to a Waynes who who uh does the evaporating of my sap I don't have a facility to do it he does he has a sap house and he taps himself so I take all my stuff over to him we work out a deal on you know he keeps half what it produces and and I get the other half which is a good deal for me because boiling down is really time consuming and you have to be right on top of it all the time we checked my buckets with a sugar maple and it was like three percent sugar with a hydrometer and we checked some in of the sap that I got from the red maple and it was just under two percent so there was a there was a difference that way so I think probably because of the sugar maple you know the content of sugar is much higher so I guess we can't see it dripping right now but you know it is cold here and and I bet tomorrow it'll be running good so we'll check check again tomorrow about all I'm going to do today I may put out a few uh of the plastic taps and in lines this afternoon I got a few more trees that I could tap over in the wood lot but uh I guess that about does it for the day and stay tuned we may have another episode take care