Let it Flow...Is It Sap-Tappin Time in the Catskills?

Tapping maple trees is more of an art than a science. There's no empirical way to know when the time to tap is....there's a combination of factors to look out for, but mostly it seems that practice and instinct are key. I can't remember when we tapped last year, but it was sunny and warm, and the sap came a runnin out. This year, the past few days have been the right combo of warm during the day and chilly at night to make us antsy that it was time to tap the trees. We ordered up some Tree Saver Taps from Leader Evaporator in Vermont, along with a 500-foot roll of tubing -- this year we're making the move from old fashioned bucket luggin to the ultra-efficient gravity driven sap super highway! But its going to be a transitional move, because our evaporating (sap to syrup) system isn't getting a parallel upgrade....

So, today we installed a trial tap. We'll see how this tap does today and tomorrow, and if it seems the sap's runnin, we'll get the rest of our operation in gear. We have 50 Tree Saver Taps, more than we can handle. Keep in mind that one tap can result in about 1 quart of syrup -- however you need close to 10 gallons of sap to boil down into that 1 quart. One drip at a time....

Here's Zenka drilling the test hole:

The first hole!

This is the Tree Saver Tap - the better tap for your trees!

Here's the first sweet drip of sap:

Now we connect our new tubing, this way we don't have to figure out how to secure a 5-gallon bucket to a tap on a tree...we definitely had a few spilled buckets last year!








And here's the final set up, with the bucket. We will be able to connect several taps from a single tree to a single bucket. Simple.