 Now the maple tree is very much a tree that grows in a Nishnabeg country. We believe it's one of those gifts from creation through Nana Bojo and through other spirits that was given to Nishnabeg years and years ago. The maple is is grows only in this part of the world, the sugar maple as such right in northeast of North America. There are other trees from around the world but don't give out as much sugar as this this tree here that grows around here. So we treasure that tree, we've always worked with that tree. We give thanks to that tree for for its gift to us. Okay I wanted to show you how a maple tree looks like. These are young maples and but they're too young to tap but I wanted to show you how they look like when they're young. They have a kind of a smooth looking bark. There are other trees that have this kind of look to them so you can't really get them shouldn't get them confused. Like the poplar tree as an example also has smooth bark but I wanted to show you in a minute here the mature tree. They start to develop these cracks as they get older on down the tree and these get bigger as the tree gets bigger itself. So you begin to see this kind of marking and it and then you see that it's a more mature tree. So if you could just sort of follow me over to over there. I just want to show you another type of tree that can get easily confused and this one here this is an ash. This is a white ash. Now you can see they also have a smooth bark when they're young but as they get mature you see this kind of barring cake in place and ridges and so on. The maple does the same thing but does it a different style. Okay we'll step over to a more mature maple over here that is tapable. Now this is a mature maple and it depends on how big it is how many taps you can put on it. We've put two taps on this one but you can see how it starts to bar up and the maple particularly starts to have these this bark come peeling off it almost like it's peeling and that's characteristic of the maple so you guys know what it looks like. There are over here is an example I'll just show you in a minute another mature tree which is the red oak this one here is a red oak it's mature it's I would say this oak is about 60 to 70 years old but it doesn't peel like the maple does and it's darker and it's not as gray as as the maple so this is a red oak. It grows usually in hard ways along with the maple but it does not it bears some sap but it's very low in sugar and you don't want to waste your time working it because you won't get much sugar out of it so on. So you could see this general forest here is what we call hardwoods versus softwoods which softwoods are pines and cedars and this is where you find the maple tree. You find them maples as small as this one and as you can see they're not they haven't cracked yet this one is a very young tree maybe 10 years old growing and competing with the other ones to get some light it's struggling but you know I'll tell you something these mature trees know that this tree is struggling and they will hold back on nutrients in order for this to grow we know that I'm sure the science world will catch up to that someday maybe I can show you some more trees we can go this way now this one is called a basswood or a linden we use this tree it's actually not a well tree you can see where the where the birds have gotten it there's bugs in there that they're getting after and but we use this tree for fiber out of that fiber we make rope all right let me show you some other trees now this is what we call an ironwood the characteristic of an ironwood is it peels bark like this so on and it has sort of a bark that kind of lays more closer to the tree and so on you can't get that confused uh this is a young maple tree you can see the difference next to it is a hickory this is actually quite a rare tree this is a beautiful tree it's a hickory we use it for handle making for tools so you can see how it also has a smooth bark but doesn't really peel and the bars aren't as they're tighter than a maple tree and so on so that is a maple that's all I can show you if you don't know the difference the more you I think the more time you spend in the bush the better your chances at knowing the difference and I can now spot a maple tree half a kilometer away and and identify it by its shape general shape and the way it produces branches at the top of it so on uh yeah it's uh that is a mature maple maples are not doing well they are susceptible to acid and toxic rain and uh they get damaged by them and then once they get damaged by them then the parasites move in so it's not it's a tree that's very susceptible to uh the damage from industry the the best way to know what a maple tree is is to come back when the leaves are out when you can definitely identify a maple leaf uh also uh should mention to you that uh the best way to know that the season is ready is that when when the season starts to warm up around around the first of march that's when the sap starts to flow even when it's cold and looks cold feels cold they could run you need frost at night in about a two or three degree temperature above zero in order for it to run very very briskly uh we also watch certain things like animals uh to tell us if they're uh if they're eating it eating the sap like the red squirrel will come along bite a branch and start sucking on it and that's an indication that this sap is running and the season lasts about a month once you tap a tree the tap lasts about a month and then after that the natural the tree has a natural ability to seal itself uh it produces a sort of a gel which plugs the uh these holes this these are old old holes that would have been plugged by the gel uh and these uh these stop the sap from flowing at that time and that finishes the season so that's one of the ways we know the season that stopped one of the other ways is that uh insects starts moving in and start eating it here's a here's some uh moss which is an indication that the uh that they're getting to the sap and they're drinking the sap and that's beginning of the end of the season uh we've tapped this tree for about three weeks now so it's it will uh it will give sap for about another month i mean week sorry about another week so that's about the length of the season uh some people are able to get more out of it the earlier part of the season gives you really beautiful amber colored sap which is not heavily sweet and towards the end of the season it gives you a dark uh dark syrup dark sap and it's kind of woody in taste if you know what i mean it kind of turns green on us at that time but it's still it's still sap that can be worked down to syrup and is used for cooking it's a good utility type sap but not probably not good in pancakes