These Are a Few of Our Favourite Things

One of the reasons I love being a maple farmer is that winter never seems very long. In February, the maple farmers start laying out their plans for the season, and many of the ones with larger farms go out to tap their trees.

This year we have had a very long winter. Snow covered the ground around the first of November, and the cold weather has stayed with us ever since. We also go alot of snow, so we have hardly seen a ray of sunshine in the past five months. It's time. We feel it in our bones. And we continually check the temperature and ask the same question generations of maple farmers before us have asked. When is the sap going to run?

Last year we were too busy to tap our own trees, but this season, we are ready to start what we hope will be a tradition that will carry on for many years to come: making maple syrup on our own property from our own trees! Both Gary and I have worked for other people on their farms for many years, so now finally being able to work on our own farm is very exciting.

This year, our spring remained cold so long that we put off tapping until the 21st of March. On that fine morning, Gary, Dad, Mom, and I headed off into our woods with a quad trailer full of sap buckets and spiles. Gary went on ahead and tapped the trees while the rest of us came along behind to tap in the spiles, and hang up the buckets and lids. It was a beautiful mild day, the temperature hovering around -1C or -2C, and with so little snow left in the woods, we did not have to wear snowshoes and were able to move about much faster. At lunchtime we headed back to the house for a quick bite before collecting Toast and returning for an afternoon of tapping.

We tapped close to three hundred buckets that day, and Gary realized our farm has a lot more tappable maples than we first realized. Originally, we had thought we could reach about two hundred and fifty trees close to the quad trails we made over the summer, and if we made more trails this coming summer the remaining trees we could reach would probably total five hundred. However, it seems we are closer to three hundred and fifty trees that are easy to reach, and probably eight hundred taps in our forest total.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gary, Mom, and I went back to the woods to finish up the job. It had snowed a pretty good amount over the weekend, so the ground was covered in heavy, wet snow that slowed us down a little. For Toast, this made walking much more difficult, so she spent the afternoon on our heels like the little caboose bringing up the rear.

We had another fantastic afternoon, with the temperature hovering just around freezing. The sun shone through a thin cloud cover, causing the trees to cast long shadows over the bluish-white snow. It felt so good to see the sun again and feel its warmth against our skin.

After a two-hour jaunt through the woods, we were officially finished tapping. Our total number of buckets is now at three hundred and fifty-five. We unloaded our tapping gear at the temporary sugar shack Gary built and then went to have a snack and some tea in the shop. Gary lit a fire in the Centaur (the name we gave to our stocky woodstove) while I stripped off Toast's boots and coats. The snow was so sticky that by this time she was very wet and cold and told me so by squeaking at me. As the fire crackled to life, I hung the wet clothes close by the stove to dry, put the kettle on, and stuffed Toast into my sweater to warm her up. The three of us sat together, drinking tea, and listening to the drip, drip, drip of the nearby buckets as the sap slowly dropped into them.

We check the forecast every day and wonder, when will the sap run?